Stephen Jaffe gets Young Turk attention for running contrary to a corporatist millionaire in Congress.

This video link.

Separate from The Young Turks: The Real News acknowledges the The Intercept, days ago, this thirteen minute video. Angie Craig and losing gets commentary. "Underpreformed the top of the ballot" gets mention as a curious beltway favoritism characteristic. And we know how the Democratic Party top of the ballot did. It is worth watching.

CD2 folks get out Tuesday, Feb. 6, and be heard. Find out where you precinct caucuses DFL, show up, and speak your mind. Or walk and vote your mind. However the precinct operates. Find out. Show up, Act for progress. Meaning, be progressive and visibly so.

_____________UPDATE_______________
Mixing matters under a single headline is akin to our outstanding legislators putting more than a single subject in a bill; which is unconstitutional under the Minnesota Constitution, but they don't care.

At any rate, a clarification: Angie Craig is not an undesirable candidate, certainly so if standing next to Jason TalkShow.

What galls in a major way is the procedure, you show the money to the DC beltway or you suck eggs; as The Intercept well reported in a host of instances, nationwide.

Also, Craig's status as a millionaire does not bode well for expecting her to run on taxing the rich fairly. Billionaires and millionaires on their upper bracket income should be paying a higher rate so that relief can be accorded taxpayers who never get to such rarefied air. If Craig runs on taxing the rich fairly, it would be a stupendous step on her part. If she contends she got hers so you get yours, hello, Nancy Pelosi.

That is a way of making the distinction. Craig is the Nancy Pelosi wealth-knows-best candidate in CD2, Jeff Erdmann is the Bernie fairness-to-all candidate; each saying, "I am a Democrat."

That's it. Last time, Craig against the Republican she decisively lost to, it was clear that in that election cycle I had hoped for Craig. In her favor and in contrast to others, Craig did not make herself rich as a career politician. Far from it, and that stigma simply does not apply.

However, going into it rich is a perspective I inherently trust less in general when compared to a teacher of twenty-seven years; that being a very difficult job with less pay than it deserves. Especially when class sizes creep upward year after year, or perhaps on a lesser time line but inexorably the trend is put more and more students in a class. Yet K-12 is NOT fit for the paradigm of large lecture classes in a four-year first rate university with students years older and more adult in many ways than K-8 young classes or high school adolescents.

Erdmann gets my vote, clearly so, were I to have one in CD2. It would be excellent were Erdmann to be the DFL general election candidate and getting the nationwide attention that Randy Bryce has earned by running against Darth Vader Paul Ryan.

__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Preferring Erdmann, and having more faith in his candidacy than in another run for Angie Craig; it is eyes-on-the-prize caveat time, something friend Wes V. has gently, genteely pointed out:

Randy Bryce in running against Paul Ryan is running an aggressive campaign, emailings to supporters and all.

Text of one quite recent Bryce email:

In his campaign announcement, Randy Bryce, an Army veteran and 20-year Ironworker with the Twitter handle @IronStache, declared, “Let's trade places, Paul Ryan. You can come work the iron, and I'll go to DC.”

It’s obvious to Randy and a lot of other folks that Ryan lost touch with us years ago, focusing more on power and political party than on working people or Wisconsin communities.

If you haven’t seen it already (or haven’t shared it yet) — watch Randy’s video and then share it with your family and friends.

Paul Ryan hasn't held a public town hall in his district in more than two years. Fed up with Ryan’s refusal to even listen to constituents, Randy is running for congress to have the backs of Wisconsin working people and families.

In Congress, he'll fight for a single-payer healthcare system, a $15 an hour minimum wage, a commitment to reversing climate change, and an understanding that America's diversity makes us stronger, not weaker. He'll stand with women and families for equal pay for equal work, access to reproductive care, and affordable healthcare for all of us.

CNN called it a "viral video" run by the Bryce campaign a half year ago when Bryce announced his run against Paul Ryan.

This link for the video and an MSNBC interview.

https://www.randybryceforcongress.com/

Reporting on Bryce's attending Trump's latest State of the Union speech.

A longer interview, minutes short of an hour, worth the time.

Robert Reich interviews Bryce, fifteen minutes long.

Ashville Progressive. Young Turks, about the same length.

Last do you want an endorsement you can trust, not from DCCC or DNC, but from the heart of a warrior for us.

The crying shame is Jeff Erdmann is getting less attention, in part because Erdmann runs against a mere back bench fool, Bryce takes on the face and motivating evil genius of screwing the people over with a nasty smile. And Erdmann's union is not as forthright as Bryce's union support in Wisconsin's CD1.

Yet the two are kindred souls and need to be viewed as exactly that.

Notice of an experiment in voter preferences as a democratic norm and an aim toward fundamental fairness - with a cynic's perspecitive on outcome. A precinct caucus resolution questioning the whole "Superdelegate" thing. Plus, other less boat rocking precinct caucus resolution ideas. [UPDATED]

Each is a full page image that can be downloaded and used by anyone wanting to at other precinct caucuses than the Ramsey one I attend Feb. 6.

This is the big one so it goes first. The lightning rod. Questioning something at play within the Democratic Party from Nixon times:

History matters, so briefly: McGovern was a popular grassroots presidential candidate choice. Party elite disagreed. Nixon had a strong supportive following, the Dems did not make a thing of Watergate until after McGovern's defeat and the coporate owned press, less concentrated than today, either ignored or demonized McGovern. He lost, and the party elite put so-called superdelegate giant thumb on the scale from then on so that grassroots mattered far less than if the anti-democratic step had not been taken. Skip to the present, there is the Internet now, ideally Net Neutral but separate that out for now. There are other communication channels besides Big Media, and that is how Bernie got the Bern across to the populace, thereby generating a host of fervent contributions averaging twenty-seven dollars rs each. Not big money but grassroots money in a large enough aggregate for the cause of making the nation fairer to regular people. Millionaires and billionaires still "invest" in lobbying and funding candidacies friendly and pliant toward the likes of Goldman Sachs, the Russians; whoever besides ordinary working citizens without millions of discretionary dollars each.

That noted, the belief unless proven wrong in caucus is that the end of "superdelegates" would be a popular winner; but that next step up after a committee had reviewed and edited, it would be MIA due to insider disapproval. Fully expecting that to make the effort an exercise in frustration, if you don't rock the boat you cannot awake the sleeping folks within. A reaction of silent rejection along the way from working grassroots up is expected, but a contrary surprise would be most entirely welcome.

[UPDATE: Because the above proposed resolution, which is frank and honest, might not sit well with some DFL inner party higher-ups, and even with some grassroots, an arguably gentler version is presented below, without any mention of names, but it's always going to be about Bernie getting a rigged system imposed against him, so fix it. While the central inner party DC beltway types may figure that two/four years of Trump-Pence would tilt the 2018 and  2020 elections local, state level, and nationally to all-Dem majorities everywhere Nirvana, that belief is questionable, at best, and the stakes are too high for such arrogance and complacency in the face of widespread feelings that reform is necessary and beyond overdue.]

Next. Net Neutrality, a proposal that is of critical importance but one which should generate little opposition:

Next: Many of the freedoms we enjoy, perhaps taken for granted, were fought for at the turn of the twentieth century by union activists, often at great human cost inflicted by opposing forces such as during the Matewan or The Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor strikes of 1892 and 1899. The DFL must in every platform reassert its bond with laborers, be they organized or those not yet organized:

Parallel non-union labor support via minimum wage resolutions, if offered here, would clearly be cumulative of others expected.

Next: Basic human decency, need and not conduct should be the only relevant factor in granting public benefits:

Next: A range of items, tied together by a worry that indirect disenfranchisement of voters who may more likely vote Democrat may lie behind some Republican policies; with the obvious voter ID issue being ever present. Not wanting to be cumulative of other expected voter ID resolution proposals, the aim is to see other less-than-direct things afoot:

Click that hummer to get a sense of the states at risk. Blue and put on tenter hooks, and if there is piecemeal enforcement there a lot of blue voters will find themselves felons without a right to vote. Rattlesnakes rattle before striking, cobras raise up. With JBS III, notice need not be given. Strike while the pipe is hot? This sets a tone, subliminal perhaps, but moving on.

JBS III has been tied to the private prison cash cow for those wanting maximum occupancy, more cash that way just like a hotel. The easiest to incarcerate, drug users, or those alleged to have possessed drugs in plain view during a police encounter. Discretion in prosecution can mean likely Dems are first choice. Besides that, basically, private prisons are not inclined to view overcrowding as a bad thing. Yet beyond anything else, emprisonment is an action of government, depriving individuals of liberty, so it should be administered and properly funded by the acting government.

[UPDATE: A prior version of the above was in error and is moot. Per reporting from 2016 the Minnesota Senate passed a proposal that non-incarcerated felons would have voting rights and felons once released from prison would only need to register to be able to vote. That proposal was not made law. The above corrected text reflects the Senate intent from 2016.] That disenfranchisement catch has been noted before, and the item may be duplicated by resolutions offered by others. The next one is a clearly recognized issue, but terse wording that is inclusive is not easy to state:

The last sentence is often overlooked during cannabis debate, (but not by Republican Mary Franson). Beyond that, much medical literature and popular argument exists to the effect that tobacco ad alcohol each are more dangerous to health than cannabis, which has some medical uses beyond debate.

Last: This may be cumulative of other resolutions. It, however is hard to word in a way both terse and precise, so an attempt was made which should pass in any precinct caucus where offered, without opposition:

For example who is funding at what levels the Taxpayer League, and what is the spending pattern? Ditto, Freedom Club. Center for the American Experience. Or how much cash is Harold Hamilton funneling to Anoka County Record personnel every issue where his Watchdog stuff gets published each issue as "PAID ADVERTISEMENT?" Citizens should know that stuff. If any such push-publishing or propagandizing is done by Democrats or their supporters in Minnesota, citizens deserve fiscal detail disclosure of that too. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

So nine items total. Many more could be written and offered. Goals were, first item pyrotecnics from inner party entrenched sorts; others aimed at uncontroversial things in general, and with a worry about blue voter sneak attacks. Figure what you like. Click the image and download it and use it in your Feb. 6, precinct caucus. I do hope that first one grows legs among caucusing Bernie people.

Imagine Mike Pence or Scott Walker as a Minnesota Attorney General. Then look at Lori Swanson's record and be thankful she is willing to keep up the slogging hard work of representing consumers and not big money. Siding with big money always has been the easy way...

Nothing more need be said. Go to the Swanson website.

http://loriswanson.com/

Swanson represents the best of attitudes that every officeholder should embody. From Governor on down statewide or local. And at the Senate and House federal levels.

One might say the Democratic Party needs more of the same, if your "same" is Swanson.

McCollum gets a pre-election headline. Will she get a progressive primary challenger?

This link. Saying nothing about primary possibility.

The bellweather CD2 Jeff Erdmann DFL candidacy, a bit more detail, and how you can help.

Scroll down for a few earlier Crabgrass posts providing background. Or simply word search = erdmann

Now the new stuff. First, worth a thousand words, a screencapture from reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/6dv044/official_campaign_website_for_jeff_erdmann/

Know that. All of it. It is important precinct caucus information to bear in one's heart and mind.

- click the image to enlarge and read -

A campaign video and a WCCO video report, each on YouTube.

Please do take under five minutes to view the video. Erdmann's voice is not a strident or radical one. He's from a community he loves and has served as a teacher for decades. He is not a corporate voice that could well run in the other party. This is a bedrock campaign. One aiming to see better attention to the people by one voice added to Congress. One such added voice, or several, could tilt the balance in the House, at best, and at least would be a step to better government in Washington, DC.

................................

To help, easy, contribute wherever you live; volunteer if in CD2:

https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00641415/

This is not a big Daddy Warbucks donor show, it is a Bernie-like incremental support effort of many small donors. Starved of cash help, the candidacy may falter.

My initial contribution of $54 [ 2 x $27 ] will be mailed today. ActBlue is available to those not choosing snailmail.

Again, particular characteristics of this campaign effort, in context, can be found in earlier Crabgrass posting by word-searching the candidate's last name.

Do it, if interested without having read earlier posting.

LAST AND IMPORTANT: Caucus for Jeff [CD2 limited]

UPDATE: Readers are urged to neither pass over the opening image text nor ignore the link. Read what the candidate says, unless you think it irrelevant. This is a candidate who does not wait for poll results to fill out an "issues" page on a campaign website. He starts with a vision and a policy list, because he is sincere that way and not posturing a cynical run based on polling demographics from highly paid consultants saying what might maximize a vote tally. He is not waiting for a campaign to be scripted for him. His heart and mind at the start seem to give enough guidance.

"Shares in health care companies took a big hit in early trading Tuesday, hinting at the threat of the new entity to how health care is paid for and delivered in the U.S."

And may reform follow. The story is at AP, Strib carrying the feed or you can websearch for a different post, but the headline is from the middle of the report. And it resonates. Perhaps toward great good. Perhaps to another same-old reach to fleece us over healthcare; a new entrant to the trough vs. a white knight change of paradigm. We will have to wait and see whether this image from atop Strib's coverage represents system-change innovation or just three already over-wealthy stooges chasing yet another buck. One bet, some of both at play. Another bet would be to see a rebound in those shares noted in above headlining. A short term market shift and adjustment, with long term uncertainty about that which is new and possibly different.

click the thumbnail image to enlarge and read

Early text from the report:

The leaders of each company, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Buffett, and JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, offered few details Tuesday and said that the project is in the early planning stage.

"The ballooning costs of (health care) act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Buffett said in a prepared statement. "Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable."

The new company will be independent and "free from profit-making incentives and constraints." The businesses said the new venture's initial focus would be on technology that provides "simplified, high-quality and transparent" care.

It was not clear if the ultimate goal involves expanding the ambitious project beyond Amazon, Berkshire or JPMorgan. However, JPMorgan's Dimon said Tuesday that, "our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans."

A will of large business entities to look for something better than the established for-profit insurer offerings looks a lot like an armada wishing to avoid pirates. May they succeed at that, and then grow to benefit all in the nation, keeping the non-profit orientation stated early in their game. A non-profit oriented private sector delivery system nationwide would be a viable challenge to government provided healthcare as a right, the private sector always arguing it is more nimble and intelligent than "bureaucrats." If these three can quickly prove such a mythology true, bless them. However, the nation needs something better than the status quo; it being overdue but health industrial complex players and their lobbyists have tllted the nation away from the sane choice. There is nothing graven in stone carried down from a mountain by Roy Moore that says government cannot provide a floor for everyone while a single well-motivated and decent private firm cannot provide diversity. Just get the UnitedHealth pack genre of leeches out of things, and flowers will bloom and every day will be sunny.

UPDATE: Readers are strongly urged to read the entire AP[Strib] report, as it has content well beyond the headline and the quoting. An ultimate decoupling of employment and having healthcare coverage is likely to happen in the nation, sooner or later. A single tax change, making such coverage non-deductible for employer-corporations and at the same time making it an added part of income to employees would kill it instantly. Such a reform would have many crabbing and moaning, but it's a bias in the market, with a history. It may have outlived some of its earlier post-WW II purpose.

The bellweather Congressional election in the State of Minnesota hinges on the DFL candidacy, CD2, so that most of us can watch but without having a vote. The Erdmann DFL candidacy, vs a proven money-backed loser unable last election to defeat a mediocre GOP talk radio person, will be key to seeing even a hint of party reform, or not. Let us hope on behalf of the Erdmann "insurgency" aganist complacent satisfaction with losing, so long as losing is done the beltway way with money slushing around hither and yon. [UPDATED]

The headline sets the tone. Consider reviewing earlier posting, via a word search = Erdmann. Or be complacent, as counted on by beltway consultants intent on "our way or the highway" regard for regular citizens.

_______ELEVATED COMMENT AND RESPONSE_______

COMMENT:
Wes Volkenant said...

Eric - CD 2 Democratic race is an example of differences in our perspectives. It doesn't make either of us "right" or "wrong" but we can support opposite candidates.

I like Angie Craig as a candidate - certainly more so than you. These days I gravitate to candidates, like Craig - a well-financed, well-spoken, proven leader, strong lesbian role model, and determined after her narrow miss in 2016.

Craig lost because of Paula Overby. In 2014, running in the Independence Party, Overby got 5%. John Kline won with about 56%, defeating the Democrat, Obermueller, who had 38%.

In 2016, Jason Lewis lost 9% of Kline's vote - very significant. Craig lost by just over 1%, receiving nearly 46% of the vote - a 7+% gain. Overby drew 7.8%, about a 3% increase, running on the Green Party label.

A reasonable analyst would argue that Overby did not pull Republican votes away. And, she is running for the Senate in 2018.

I think it bodes well for Craig to draw a 4-5% increase, if not more, over her 2016 totals.


Perhaps Erdmann has what it takes, too. I don't know if he'd play better, worse, or about the same, if he were the DFL candidate instead of Craig.

But, we often look to give close losers, who showed marked increase over the previous election cycle - especially in a bad election year of 2016, a second try to wrest away the office.

REJOINDER:
Is the last presidential a "close loser" to be given another bite at the apple? Despite GoldmanSachs and Uranium One? Despite having made a massive family fortune out of being nothing but a career politician? Where would you draw the line? The attitude prevailing that progressives have no where else to go, "Fuck 'em because they will not, have not voted Republican," ignored stay-at-home protest or what I did, Jill Stein, and down-ticket less offensiveness DFL.

Bernie would have won. Deny that and it's the end of genteel debate. Bernie was sandbagged. The anti-democratic "Superdelegate" thing has a stench that needs remediation.

Taking progressives for granted nationally allowed the two lowest esteemed candidates of all time to move on to yet one more general election of that kind of LESSER OF EVILS choice. Pre-general election polling showed neither Clinton nor Trump were liked much at all by anybody. The more skilled of two grifters won. Because progressives were affirmatively disdained. And they felt the Bern. Blaming a third party candidate? Come on. Get real. If we had viable multi-party status in the nation, bravo. We don't. Craig lost because Lewis got more votes. That kind of does say something. To say "third-party" when the actual hope is a disaffection with people who have seen enough Trump-Pence to elect a historical loser is possibly one way to see things, but that ignores Erdmann and the strength of his character and his differences from Craig. And his being a new face and new force in his way of thinking. His lack of corporatism ties matters too. Are teachers as candidates a bad thing? To whom? They don't have piles of money, but most of us do not either. How the pie has been divided happens to be a major progressive issue, these days, and forever.

How does this wash: http://left.mn/2014/03/knew-klobuchar-franken-nolan-support-polymet-mining/

Unless and until sense is paid to progressives and the humane agenda, the spoils will be at stake. The governor race has several progressives, more progressive than Walz, so let's see how that works. Swanson at AG, staying there because fence straddling got called by Ellison keeps a sound progressive anchored at AG and does not add more clog to the field.

Obermueller got zero national NCCC and DNC support. He was left to hang and twist in the wind. He ran against an incumbent. Craig could not beat a mediocre talk radio idiot for a vacant seat. Run her again after that? Where's the wisdom to that?

Read where Erdmann stands. Think about it. Then a millionaire medical device candidate, having that constituency, is better? In what absolute sense? Tell me that.

Read and reflect upon this. Are the facts recited there in question? If so, why? Fairness is a question needing attention all the time.

There is a civil war. Face it. Give up the "Superdelegate" insult to fundamental will-of-the-people democratic norms, and progressives might see that as an olive branch. I will in my precinct caucus be offering that reform as a resolution. Bernie was snaked that way and it has to be faced.

This round, I stand 100% behind the ultimate DFL governor candidate because I would not like to see a Scott Walker attack on teachers and civil servants, in line with Koch will and intentions. That would be a bad outcome. But Wes, where's the olive branch? Ending "Superdelegate" stuff would be a great one, but expecting that is like expecting rain in a desert.

Craig has money. Okay. Spent a lot. Lost. To an idiot. Who at the presidential level might that remind us of?

Corporatism is a problem, since the first Clinton's "triangulation" business. State houses in Democrat hands is at an all time low, state legislatures are too Republican in Minnesota and elsewhere, gerrymandering has been allowed by courts, and the nation is in dire straits because the legacy of FDR's willingness to concede something to progressive thought has been abandoned.

Neither of us has a CD2 vote, we live in demographics that weigh heavily on middle of the road as well as upon progressive belief, so I do not see any denial that CD2 precinct caucus turnout results will be a bellweather test of what future if any the DFL faces.

BOTTOM LINE: Angie Craig is short term thinking. Erdmann is long term. Which is the sounder choice? A process is in place; but as with Bernie, Erdmann would win the general election, while a proven loser is an option. Of sorts. Counting on a giant Trump-Pence backlash might be okay, short term. Sending a sincere hard working teacher to Congress might be the more sensible and decent thing to do. Why does that NOT resonate in the beltway? Go figure. Haim Saban said his money would stop if a Muslim Ellison were to be DNC head, and we got Tom Perez. Clearly Haim has a bigger vote than I do. That's not right. It simply is not right, but how it is. Reform is needed, and need for reform cannot be ignored.

RAMSEY: A reminder, there is a special election pending for a vacant at-large council seat.

Go to the city's website, elections, and note four candidates and a link to an online LWV forum involving the four. With things that mapped out and easy there is no excuse to be uninformed if voting.

Early voting is going on at City Hall, during regular weekday hours, so voters need not wait until the Feb. 13, "election day," the deadline day when voting for that special election will cease and ballots will be counted to determine a winner. Nothing could be easier than stopping by the City reception desk on the way to Coborn's and taking minutes to enter a ballot.

If it is not about Amy, not about Tina, not about Lori, who?

Headline - an attention grabber - You Won’t Change the Outcome - If You Don’t Change the Candidate

As a needed disclaimer, there is no suggestion of changing horses midstream - Amy, Tina and Lori each being midstream incumbents with records on which to run and be judged.

When Trump says "Loser," you don't pay attention. He says too much, too often, and contradicting himself likely is thought by him to be an endearing charm.

This is Angie time. This link. Read it.

Same site, endorsed candidates, and look at the last one, how can you NOT send a check or go Act Blue on that one?

Shower Randy Bryce with money to win. Clearly his heart and mind are in the proper place.

https://www.randybryceforcongress.com/

You run against the root of all evil, you deserve positive feedback.

A link that got me to the Bryce website. The check to Bryce will be in the mail.

Note: Usually I yawn at endorsements, but Bryce has the good range, from Bernie to NARAL.

The sin of rocking the comfortable boat of established election losers. Barbarians at the gate, our money, our money, oh my . . .

theintercept.com at this link. Opening image is not Irish eyes smiling. Predictable entrenched eyes, certainly. Helpful to insurgents. No. Satisfied with a status quo? Can you point to anything beyond stale knee-jerk rhetoric suggesting otherwise? Happy with Tom Perez at DNC with the organization happily willing to take corporate/PAC/big donor cash? The more, the merrier. Whose eyes? That one is easy:

Shop-worn uninspiring eyes. Looking for nails that stand up to be pounded down.

From the Intercept's title you know it will be a recitation of disheartening bootstompings one after another; peasant rebellions being the worse of any mood of dissatisfaction.

From the item:

Stephen Lynch, a House Democrat from Massachusetts, was elected in 2000 after a competitive primary. In 2013, he ran and lost a Senate special election against Ed Markey, with the party squarely behind Markey. “It’s challenging,” he said. “There were leaders in the Democratic Party that were discouraging people from donating to me.”

Lynch now faces a primary challenge from Brianna Wu, an engineer famous for taking on the “alt-right” in the GamerGate affair. In general, he said, the party should stay neutral.

“You’d rather have an election than a selection. Sometimes it actually makes our candidates stronger to have competition. I understand the parties are more concerned with the resources spent in the primary. Obviously if you have an uncontested primary, you save a lot of money, but I think from a leadership standpoint — small “l” leadership — you might develop a better candidate if they have a challenger early on.”

If money isn’t necessarily the best path to victory, that smart Washington-based operatives continue to make it the key variable regardless raises the question of what other motivations may be in play. For Lynch, the answer is simple: It’s a racket. “The Democratic and Republican parties are commercial enterprises and they’re very much interested in their own survival,” Lynch said. “The money race is probably more important to them than the issues race in some cases.”

The Intercept asked Lynch if the commercialization he referred to was for the benefit of the officials working in and around elections. “How much of the focus on fundraising,” we asked, “has to do with pumping money into this ecosystem of consultants and everybody else?”

“That’s what I mean,” Lynch said. “It’s a commercial enterprise.”

[...] In order to establish whether a person is worthy of official backing, DCCC operatives will “rolodex” a candidate, according to a source familiar with the procedure. On the most basic level, it involves candidates being asked to pull out their smartphones, scroll through their contacts lists, and add up the amount of money their contacts could raise or contribute to their campaigns. If the candidates’ contacts aren’t good for at least $250,000, or in some cases much more, they fail the test, and party support goes elsewhere.

Asked about the process, Kelly, the DCCC communications director, said, “Our support for a candidate is not based on the amount of money that their personal network can raise – in fact there are many strong candidates that we support with a limited ability to raise money from people that they know.”

That emphasis on fundraising can lead the party to make the kinds of decisions that leave ground-level activists furious. Take, for example, the case of Angie Craig, a medical device executive who ran for Congress in Minnesota’s second district in 2016 and has thrown her hat in the ring again.

The medical device industry is huge in Minnesota, and its outsized lobbying power is felt acutely in Washington. Despite spending $4.8 million, Craig lost by 2 points. That narrow defeat, though, belied the true failure of her campaign. She was, objectively, the least inspiring candidate up and down the ballot: Craig underperformed Clinton by 4,000 votes and even underperformed Democratic state Senate and House candidates by 13,000 and 2,000 votes, respectively. In 2012, the previous presidential cycle, congressional candidate Mike Obermueller spent $710,000 for a nearly identical level of support.

Jeff Erdmann thinks he knows why Craig lost. He was a volunteer for her in 2016, phone banking and going door to door. That spring, a voter asked him a question about Craig’s position on an issue that he couldn’t answer, so when Craig held a Q&A with the volunteers, he asked her if it was OK to direct voters to the website for an answer. “No, not really,” Erdmann recalled her saying, “because we haven’t developed our website yet because we don’t want the Republicans to know where we stand, and we haven’t seen end-of-summer polling yet.”

Later, he said, he was phone banking and asked a supervisor what message he should tailor to the rural part of the district, since the script seemed aimed at city dwellers. “Just tell them the trailer-court story, they’re not big thinkers out there,” he said he was told, referring to Craig’s childhood in a trailer home.

This time around, Erdmann decided to run himself, and he has the backing of the People’s House Project, a group founded by former congressional candidate Krystal Ball to back working-class candidates. Michael Rosenow, Erdmann’s campaign manager, said he and Erdmann reached out to the D-trip but had a hard time getting through. When they learned about a gathering the organization was hosting at an adjacent congressional district, they decided to crash it.

Erdmann has the kind of charisma you’d expect from someone who has coached high school football — and has had remarkable success in that role for more than two decades in a state that cares deeply about the sport. He has also taught American government for 27 years, but all of that had not prepared him for the conversation he was about to have with Molly Ritner, the midwest political director for the DCCC, at a hotel bar in Minneapolis called Jacques.

“It’s been weird for Jeff,” said Rosenow, who was there for the July 10 meeting. “The first question out of her mouth was, ‘How much will you raise?’”

They had raised $30,000 by that point, a figure that Ritner deemed unimpressive. (By the end of December, the campaign had raised around $115,000, according to Rosenow.)

“That’s not very much,” Rosenow recalls Ritner saying. “Really all we care about is, the more money you raise, the more you can get your message out.”

Erdmann tried to jump in, beginning to lay out his backstory, hoping to make the case that getting your message out doesn’t matter if voters don’t like the message. “He seems like he was grown in the tank for this district, but they didn’t care at all,” Rosenow said, “All she wanted to know was how much money he could raise.”

Ritner had been Midwest fundraising director at the DCCC in 2013 and 2014, before taking a break to run the campaign of the Democrat who lost the Vermont governor’s race to a Republican in 2016. She noted that Craig had ran an “amazing campaign” last cycle and asked if Erdmann had any big funders ready to get behind him. “Jeff laughed. He said, ‘I’ve been a teacher my whole life, how would I have big funders behind us?’” Rosenow recalled.

DCCC Chair Ben Ray Luján, a Democratic representative from New Mexico, was in his hotel room upstairs, Ritner told them, but he didn’t come down for the meeting. A DCCC official denied Erdmann’s account, saying Luján had already left the hotel for the airport at the time of the meeting.

Erdmann estimated the meeting lasted eight minutes. “She ordered a pop, got it, drank it, threw the number out that we had to hit, and left,” he said. On her way out, Ritner put $2 on the table. The check came to $2.26, before the tip. “I looked at Mike and said, ‘That is why the Democrats lose,’” concluded Erdmann.

Enough about Erdmann/Craig, you get the drift; medical device money talks, progressive thought walks. Born in a trailer could not beat a third rate talk show host, so run Born in a trailer again? Support a proven loser if there's the smell of money to the machine? What?

There is the money quote, sidebar grist earlier, then in the flow:

“They don’t want to talk about the civil war in the party, but when you treat us like hill people when we come up here, what do you expect?” concluded Rosenow.

Craig, fresh off her “amazing” 2016 race, is back again. Ritner, according to Erdmann and Rosenow, said the DCCC would remain neutral in the primary, but that didn’t last long. In November, the DCCC endorsed Craig, joining EMILY’s List and End Citizens United, the trio of groups that represents the party’s central authority. Last week, she picked up the backing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.

[link in original] There is astroturf. It never did look like rooted grass, but never mind, it can be bought by the square yard:

End Citizens United, an ostensible political reform group, was founded in 2015 by three consultants from Mothership Strategies, all veterans of the DCCC. End Citizens United has since paid Mothership Strategies over $3.5 million in fees, according to Federal Election Commission records. In its first few years, other campaign finance reform groups grew suspicious of the PAC, which they referred to as a “churn and burn” group dedicated to raising money by blanketing email lists with aggressive solicitations, a hallmark of the DCCC’s own email strategy.

[links in original] Continuing:

End Citizens United’s entry into the Minnesota race is particularly odd, given that Craig, while at the medical device company St. Jude Medical, directed the firm’s political action committee in the 2012 election cycle, after spending the previous six years on its board. The goal of the St. Jude PAC was to buy influence with Republican and Democratic leaders, as well as members of the tax-writing committees, in pursuit of repealing the medical device tax that was a key funding mechanism of the Affordable Care Act. The effort eventually met with significant success.

While she ran it, the PAC spent heavily on Republican politicians, directing funds in the 2012 cycle to Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch, Scott Brown, Mike Enzi, Richard Burr, Bob Corker, and John Barrasso. Then-Speaker John Boehner and presumed-future-speaker Kevin McCarthy, as well as the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, all got money from Craig’s PAC.

This, then, was the résumé that earned the support not just of the DCCC and EMILY’s List, but also of a group publicly committed to campaign finance reform.

[...] A DCCC official, asked about Craig’s time running the corporate PAC, said it was unfair to accuse a married lesbian raising a family of being part of the political establishment, and that her business success was an asset, not a liability.

[...] “All Jeff talks about is political reform, so that was a shot to the heart,” said Rosenow, Erdmann’s campaign manager, on losing the endorsement. “If your goal is to get money out of politics, how in the fuck — I’m sorry, how in the hell are you backing someone who ran a corporate PAC?”

Such a rhetorical question then being image answered by The Intercept - click that link, check it out.

There is roughly another half to the item, so hit the link, read on, after that image-answer.

The remainder of that post is not Minnesota-centric, but the excerpt - longer than a Trump tweet, but then more truthful, nuanced, and not dumbed down. Good story telling is always in the details.

BOTTOM LINE: Something in the good story telling surely makes me want to see Jeff Erdmann whomp Angie Craig by a tidal wave margin. He could easily whomp Jason Talkshow, but he has to get there first. May the stars align favorably. Others may react differently to the good story. But then I'm at the gate, not defending it.


_______________UPDATE________________

A worthwhile image deserves a link

https://peopleshouseproject.com/erdmann/

The item behind that link tells Erdmann's story, his outlook, and links to his campaign site:

https://erdmannforcongress.com/

Bookmark that site, since it tells you where to send the campaign money where my suggestion is do it in $27 increments, which I shall be doing - Jeff, the check will be in the mail.

Read a MinnPost item, and see what you think. It is a waffle, mentioning Klobuchar.

This link. Not knowing author Sam Brodey personally, his posting list seems that of a negative-thinking cluck over progressives wanting a better and bigger voice and to not be ignored within their own party. It shows up in the Klobuchar-related item.

Go figure. Amy is at no risk of anything other than reelection by landslide margins as long as she runs, the opposition being sacrificial GOP lambs willing to take one for the party. Mark Kennedy was the strongest in that parade, a middle Republican of limited accomplishments, but he took the hit and was rewarded for it with an ongoing business and then academic paycheck. Kennedy was Sixth District Rep before the Bachmann years torched reality, which made him look better than he was, by comparison. For a political commentator Brodey seems attuned to listening to Beltway cocktail bar musings of this-and-that chatter more than he might be attuned to on-the-ground reality.

Klobuchar's seat is rock solid. Brodey should know that, and perhaps he does but then that would make his story of uncertainty moot and unpublished.

_____________UPDATE______________
More Brodey beltway bias related to the kick the can into February "shutdown" coverage? Who outside of the beltway really regarded that Kabuki theater stunt as still news? Brodey did. Let's look. This snark-titled item, midway, posits:

If you had, “Sen. Amy Klobuchar leads bipartisan group of senators to end impasse” on your Shutdown Bingo, well, congratulations! I reported this week that Klobuchar, working with about 20 of her colleagues, played a central role in getting Democrats to yes on a deal that would have been a non-starter just days earlier. (They dubbed themselves the Common Sense Coalition. There was a talking stick. Yay, bipartisanship!)

Not everyone was feeling the kumbaya vibes as the shutdown came to an end: the progressive base of the Democratic Party is furious that the majority of their senators voted to break the shutdown and in their view, surrender whatever leverage they had in exchange for McConnell’s word.

How angry, you might ask? Iraq War angry: a progressive activist told me that voting yes on this compromise is as bad as a yes vote on the Iraq War authorization was back in 2002.

That's the money quote [bolding and links in original; full NYT link here, for some reason a contracted link used there]. Let's deconstruct that in a bit of detail. A "base is furious" hyperbole, linking to an item clearly titled, "Senate Democrats’ Vote to End Shutdown Infuriates Some on the Left." Then, some contracts more to, "a [i.e., one unnamed] progressive activist told me ...as bad as a yes vote on the Iraq War" which means, perhaps, a tippsy individual might have peed on the coctail lounge floor in anger, while making hilarious analogies no fool could take seriously. Really. So what did NYT write, briefly excerpted but not tweet length:

Regardless of what happens in the Senate, progressive and immigrant advocacy groups said House Republican leaders will never take up a bill that would offer legal status to young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children without excruciating concessions on other immigration issues. They accused Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and moderate Democratic senators of capitulating to protect senators up for re-election in November in Republican-leaning states.

“They blinked because they’ll always put the party and the success of the party first,” said Representative Luis V. Gutiérrez of Illinois, one of the leading Democratic advocates for immigrants, complaining that Hispanics got short shrift. “It’s the one word they know in Spanish: mañana.”

The hasty retreat by 33 Senate Democrats was particularly humiliating in the immediate aftermath of the anniversary of the Women’s March, which saw thousands of activists reconvene in cities across the country to protest against President Trump and congressional Republicans. Liberal groups such as MoveOn.org began urging members to sign up on Monday for rallies aimed at pressuring Republicans to protect the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

[...] “The grass-roots are rightly furious with a slew of elected Democrats,” said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn.org.

It's a giant reach to even think to equate MoveOn.org with the progressive base. Bernie ran on economic screwing of the rest of us by the one percent; while another individual staged a convention balloon drop to the background singing of "Stronger Together." Bernie avoided that trap of not keeping eyes on the real prize. Bernie is crystal clear, consistently so; and Bernie is the progressive keystone. What in this Bernie agenda do you suppose Brodey misunderstands; or does he not care to take the care to be informed? There are only twelve points; none being taking it to the streets over predominantly Hispanic-centered issues. There is a different and separate coalition that can do that.

Presumably if Brodey would have secured face time interviewing with Bernie he'd have fallen all over himself to feature that in his item. So, some lesser anon. "progressive activist" of whatever mental mood fumed in a one-on-one chat, Brodey taking notes or holding a recorder.

BOTTOM LINE BRODEY: More anti-progressive cluck than not? Or soundly based? First, most people should think ending "shutdown" gaming even if by kicking a can down the road for weeks was a sensible, adult thing to do; no problem. Shutdown posturing is stupid to begin with.

I think we see a beltway hooey machine, whoever is oiling it to keep smooth functioning. My opinion of sheer gossamer spinning over what "the progressive base" thinks, aside from Bernie's twelve point concrete agenda, is as it is in Brodey's work and that MinnPost should elevate its publishing standards; yet, clearly, opinions can differ. MinnPost editorial decision making is an example of a differing opinion.

FURTHER: Same Brodey item, later than above quoted excerpt:

Meanwhile, the stocks of those Democrats who voted no on the compromise — including Sens. Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker — skyrocketed in the progressive base. (Note: all these people are thinking about being president. So, too, potentially, is a certain Minnesota senator who voted the other way.)

[bolding in original] One who would try to yoke Bernie or Elizabeth Warren as kindred in spirit to Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand either has an unstated agenda or a tin ear for nuance. There are parallels for the first two; and then for the latter three; but little actual overlap of the separate sets beyond party membership and being to the left of Chuck Schumer and Tom Perez.

FURTHER: Take twenty minutes to better recognize "over-generalizing hooey" about what the true progressive base thinks and believes when the hooey is spotted in web-published items.

Quoting from a recent Lori Swanson press release. Running for reelection on her record.

image and MPR report link

Press release opening extended excerpt:

I am a candidate for re-election as Attorney General.

It is an incredible honor to represent our fellow Minnesotans in this office. I appreciate the support of the many people who have encouraged me to run for Governor. I signed up with my fellow Minnesotans for a four-year term as Attorney General. While I am complimented that recent polls show me in a leadership position if I were to run for Governor, the work of the Attorney General’s Office is at a critical juncture for the next two months. I must focus all my energy and attention on that work.

Representing our fellow Minnesotans has provided me with a profound sense of achievement.

We were the first attorney general’s office in the country to win a verdict of fraud against a for-profit college for ripping off students with overblown promises to sell expensive degrees. HBO’s Vice, a national program, recognized our win for students.

We are the only office in the country to ban from our state a Wall Street company—Accretive Health—for its harassment of patients in hospital emergency rooms. National Public Radio, the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC highlighted our successful battle in this hard-fought litigation, and HealthLeaders magazine recognized me as one of the top 20 Americans making a difference in health care.

We are the only office in the country to stop the nation’s largest consumer arbitration company—the National Arbitration Forum—–from running a rigged arbitration system in which it unfairly adjudicated millions of consumer credit cases. Our year-long investigation spanned all 50 states. The national publication Lawyers USA recognized our accomplishment when it named me one of the top 10 attorneys in America in 2009, saying: “She toppled the dominant player in debt arbitration in the country and changed the face of consumer credit card arbitration overnight.”

We are the only office in the country that negotiated and maintained a settlement with all Minnesota hospitals to charge uninsured patients no more than insurance companies for the same treatment.

We were the only attorney general’s office in the country to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in refund offers for senior citizens who were sold inappropriate investments by insurance companies. NBC’s national program Dateline heralded our win for seniors. [...]

The release continues, but the message already is clear. Abuses were noticed. Abuses were contested. Relief for citizens resulted.

It is a substantial record. AG is less a subject of media attention, so such a list is helpful when caucusing and voting. Anyone believing a Republican in that office would have undertaken even one of those contests lives a sheltered life in fantasy land.

Keeping the DFL in that office only makes sense.

Update on state action aimed at a raised middle finger to Comcast, Verizon, and willing corporate tool, Ajit Pai, causing national Internet havoc at FCC.

Andrew Cuomo, New York's Governor, followed the lead of Steve Bullock, Montana's Governor, in issuing an executive order requiring any ISP wanting to do business with the State to adhere to Net Neutrality principles. This Ars link. Opening excerpt:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the executive order yesterday, days after Montana Governor Steve Bullock did the same. The states are challenging the Federal Communications Commission, which repealed its own net neutrality rules and preempted states from imposing similar ones.

The executive orders attempt an end run around the FCC's preemption of local laws. Instead of directly requiring all ISPs to follow net neutrality principles, the executive orders require state agencies to only do business with ISPs that offer neutral networks.

"The FCC's dangerous ruling goes against the core values of our democracy, and New York will do everything in our power to protect net neutrality and the free exchange of ideas," Cuomo said in an announcement yesterday.

No charging extra for specific content

The order says state agencies and departments may not "enter into any contracts for Internet service unless the ISPs agree to adhere to net neutrality principles." ISPs would disqualify themselves from obtaining state contracts if they "block, throttle, or prioritize Internet content or applications or require that end users pay different or higher rates to access specific types of content or applications."

The New York order goes beyond Montana's by including the specific provision against charging users higher rates to access specific types of Internet content and applications.

[Links from original included to flesh out the report] The item concludes with insufficient wording to the effect it is the Democrats that are serving the public interest whereas Pai, appointed to FCC by Trump January, 2017, is the hatchet man the Republicans love because it would serve a nefarious will to impede the citizenry by allowing big money to pervert the Internet to the sorry, sad level of cable TV:

States are using a few strategies to rebel against the FCC's elimination of net neutrality rules. There is net neutrality legislation pending in several states, and 22 attorneys general are suing the FCC in an attempt to reverse the net neutrality repeal.

In general, Democratic state officials are the ones challenging the FCC. Every US state with a Democratic attorney general is part of the lawsuit against the commission, but no Republican state attorneys general joined the effort.

It is a short item, well reported.

Per the final item paragraph, Minnesota AG Lori Swanson has joined her office in the state litigation against the heavy boot of the corporatist FCC impositions. She is DFL. She is doing the right thing. It as much exposes the Republican anti-citizen position to a voting public, as well as challenging the "preemptive" reach of the FCC to do nationwide uniform harm.

Ars, here, has follow-up reporting about Montana's position that its governor's executive order is lawfully sound. It links to a fact sheet stating the reasoning behind that contention; this screen capture (click it to enlarge and read, or this link):

Bless the holding actions that shall be pending until a disillusioned and repulsed public can, in the 2018 election, vote out enough Republicans in Congress and replace them with Democrats so that the nation may gain Democrat majorities in both houses, and function better again. The problem, as always with Democrat majorities, is too many corporatists and too few progressives. May the 2018 election upset that haunting reality. That FCC undoing of Net Neutrality is a really thugish-fascist thing to be doing to a nation's people. It deserves nothing but intense public scorn.

Finally, yes this post indulges in hyperbole, but the issue has been back-burner with mainstream media while it is quite serious a thing. Hyperbole might have to be used to awaken the public's interest over abridgment of the public interest. End of story.

__________UPDATE____________
Dayton may awaken. Do read that Montana fact sheet. It is inclusive, while artfully held to a single page. Write or phone or email Governor Dayton to advocate his following two other leading governors in protecting their state's people as best as the situation allows. Dayton remains vexingly behind the leading edge of the wave on the issue of ending failed marijuana prohibition and instead regulating cannabis commerce. Perhaps he'd be more comfortable with a progressive position on Net Neutrality. While far from a Bernie level of progressivism, the man is, after all, not a Republican.

Hitting the news, multiple sources, Rep. Ellison is weighing a candidacy for the Minnesota Attorney General office. Swanson has clarified her intention to seek reelection as AG.

Strib tracking Swanson, here.

Strib, here, publishing minutes ago news that Swanson has declared an intent to run for reelection as Attorney General.

Google News, regarding Ellison, here.

That latter link cites coverage by Politico and The Hill, and TPM, while the Strib items are local content, not any news service wire feed.

Check it all out.


UPDATE: The Ellison reporting is from Friday, Jan. 26.

The Swanson clarification is from earlier today, Sunday, Jan. 28.

This post is published without fully reading linked material. Getting the message out first seemed wise.

Besides national coverage of Ellison thinking of testing of waters, local reports of that have not been seen. Not to say there are none.

FURTHER: As of this posting, the Swanson website "News" subpage does not yet report of the AG commitment, but an email press release was circulated 2:16 pm, today, noting that information.

The most recent Swanson News item she has posted is one of great merit, a Jan. 18, item, "Lori Swanson: Why I sued the FCC for repealing net neutrality." Readers are urged to access it and study.

Net Neutrality is a major consideration for any candidate these days, for any office, federal, state, or local. The net being free and user friendly is critical to the fate of present and future generations of Minnesotans and to all citizens and small businesses, local and nationwide.

FURTHER: A Jan. 27 local Republican anti-Ellison hit piece of little apparent merit, this link. It is more op-ed negative commentary than news reporting, but it so far seems the only local attention tracked down.

That hit piece declines to note that Ellison was an early and staunch Bernie supporter when all the lemmings went elsewhere; and that once the presidential nomination was secured by Ms. Clinton, he graciously spoke early at the nominating convention on behalf of Clinton, after that working extensively on behalf of that Clinton candidacy. I believe it fails to mention his DNC chairmanship effort, concession after voting, and his gracious acceptance of an olive branch vice-chairmanship. As said, a Republican hit-piece and little else, hence of little merit.

FURTHER: The possibility of Ellison as an activist progressive Attorney General gaining regular national attention within that role and venue, and how it might foster his likelihood of making a national presidential ticket as a progressive (which is important for improving national tickets), that is a possibility with substantial appeal among progressives who unfortunately have in the past been taken for granted by complacent DFL party functionaries. On the other hand, Swanson's tenure as AG has kept the office out of meddlesome Republican hands, and with her running as incumbent she would be less the lightning rod than Ellison. It would be less likely that national tons and tons of Republican money would be spent in demonization, were she the general election candidate, vs. Ellison on the ballot for the job.

We live in interesting times. Progressives should never have been taken for granted much as superdelegate tampering with voter preferences should never ever have happened. We live in what may be times of reckoning.

Buzzfeed has a detailed Trump real estate analysis online, which surprisingly does not mention or tie-in Wilbur Ross.

Nor is Bank of Cyprus mentioned. This link, entitled:

Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers

A BuzzFeed News review of every sale of a Trump-branded condominium in the United States provides the first comprehensive look at how many went to unidentified buyers who paid cash, an indication of possible money laundering.
Posted on January 12, 2018, 14:36 GMT
By: Thomas Frank. BuzzFeed News Reporter
__________________________________________

No excerpting on the initial post. If later supplementation seems appropriate, or excerpting, it will be by UPDATE. (As said during CSPAN televised floor speeches, "I reserve the right to revise or extend my remarks on the record.")
__________________________________________

Not writing as well as Steve Timmer, I shall not try, but there is notice given when notice is proper.

Timmer writes of things Kersten, most recently here, with a degree of disdain and disgust well earned by Kersten. Following one of Timmer's links, and where it led:

NOTICE OF A GEEK-IN; PROPERLY PRICED, THIS SCREENCAPTURE (no link given, if you are inclined to attend, go search):

click thunbnail to read

My bet is Mandy Benz and Peggy Scott will each attend; each in the published price range $200 - $25,000 each closer to the $200 end. Each wearing suitable facial cosmetics as such an event might favor.

Advice to the twenty-five grand hitters. Go lighter, and invest the difference in the Mandy Benz campaign. Mandy can "trump" Tucker, on the issues. Indeed, she well could "pence" Tucker, up, down and sideways. More "pence" than "trump" to that gold mine.

LAST: Doesn't "Gala" scripted that way carry a bit of art deco aura?

Our Revolution Minnesota: wtf? Rephrased: Endorsements for Governor have a whiff of gender bias, or not? [UPDATED]

You decide. With DFL precinct caucusing days away the question is relevant.

Start with two website links:

"Questionnaire" https://ourrevolutionmn.com/2018-progressive-candidate-report-card/

"Endorsements" https://ourrevolutionmn.com/endorsements/

In commentary below the lead titles shall be used in referring to one or the other of those links.

At the top. Governor. They produce a questionnaire, report results, then ignore much of that?

"Questionnaire" lists "Chris Wright - GRP" with a highest score; however such a "score" may have been calculated based on questions asked, the form used being online still in a *.docx MS Word format, not a *.pdf as would be more normal:

https://ourrevolutionmn.com/wp-content/uploads/Candidate-Questionnaire.docx

Whether you'd ask different question, it is their game, but how do: questions >> score is mystery to outsiders of the organization.

Chris Wright runs as "Grass Roots Party" candidate. That said, the balance of the post looks at DFL as one of two major parties, and with most GOP candidates ignoring Our Revolution Minnesota.

More a mystery to outsiders, the endorsement decision makers and their making a decision, "Endorsements" link stating:

The Candidate Questionnaire contains 17 questions and comment space. There is a pre-determined scoring process (0-100). Not every answer carries the same weight. Some answers have a positive value ranging from 1-10 points, others a negative value, and some answers are not scored at all (like the question on who the candidates endorsed in 2016). All questionnaires will be made public so our voting members can make informed decisions on who to endorse.

For statewide and federal offices, we will hold a ranked choice vote of our membership in early January.

End of transparency.

Aside from Wright's top score and looking only at DFL, "Questionnaire" scores, top of ticket are:

Top of ticket DFL "Endorsements" shows:

Has one gender "packed" the ORM ballot box? Rank Choice vote or not, one can speculate. And worry. Walz scored low on his questions grade, so discount his absence among three - not one but three - "endorsed" DFL'ers. Each a woman.

Where's Paul?

History as I understand it has had past strong DFL Feminine Caucus effort successfully aimed toward making a "gender balanced" party, expressly within party bylaws, where caucusing beyond the precinct representation is deliberately, as party policy, carefully gender neutral. Official positions within the party are subject to a conscious endeavour to be gender balanced.

All that is good and such bylaw attention should neither lessen nor change.

But, ORM is separate and apart from DFL, and it sure looks as if somebody's ranked choice deck got stacked. Badly so. Inexplicably so. To the detriment of one of several fine candidates.

Personal ranked choice here, currently, would be Liebling/Thissen, either as best, Otto, Murphy, with Walz an also-ran pre-general; but if in the general election Walz ends up the DFL's candidate, he would be far, far, far, far better than any GOP choice; and that's an unqualified endorsement: any DFL'er over any GOP choice, especially so should Pawlenty give up his big bank lobbying paycheck to muck up things in Minnesota.

Said another way, I have no trust nor faith in the ORM governor endorsement process, although their "Questionnaire" ranking seems generally sound.

MIA, in the ORM process, at this point, a CD2 and CD8 endorsement, with CD3 being a bit of a head-scratcher.

Per the "Questionnaire" Erdman was fairly well ahead of Craig in CD2, while in CD8 scores of Phifer and Nolan were a wash.

My district, CD6, there was only the one sacrificial lamb, given CD6's appalling past demographics; Michele Bachmann, etc. - and CD6 is the only congressional district where I can vote. If I could vote in CD2 it would be Erdman; in CD8 it would be Phifer; CD8 being closer in my mind.

Gut level here slightly favors Pelikan over Winkler; Hillstrom trailing; but either of the three would be a fine AG general election candidate. Pelikan seems more the outsider than either of the other two, and such a status could leaven an office that has not been too proactive over the years where AG budget under Republican Pawlenty-to-Daudt hands has been curtailed from Skip Humphrey days.

A big MIA in everything, Swanson, who's still astraddle her fence while declining any ORM participation. Swanson is a wild-card, and with precinct caucusing near, she looks as if eyeing a primary for one office or another. Which office she chooses being speculative beyond reasonableness at this point in time. Hamlet-like indecisiveness in a candidate can be viewed as a fault, or if a waiting-in-the-weeds stratagem is afoot, that would be unfortunate and of questionable merit.

Why I like Thissen about as well as Liebling will be posted separately and subsequently. Hint: Thissen has been vocal and active on Net Neutrality, but that is not alone as determinative of preferences. Liebling has not been a Net Neutrality strong activist, but she WAS with Bernie early along, not one of the host of lemmings reflexively over the Clinton cliff.

___________UPDATE__________
While above commentary characterizes the Grass Roots Party as marginal, their core issue resonates, and Chris Wright is sound on issues; but the party has not generated any more voter recognition than the libertarians, per this Oct. 2014 MPR news item, and per subsequent 2014 voting results. That is unfortunate because having a two-party stranglehold has hurt progressives with Clintonian triangulation and such moving the party to the right year after year with a progressive vote taken for granted.

An independent update thought; this link. Ranked choice voting in that item getting a drubbing without detail, but the idea has always seemed suspect to me.

Mention of Liebling in that post and comment seemed favorable, but the "Questionnaire" itself was called into question.

All told, ORM did as it did, and how the author was able to download a single candidate's responses was not clearly stated, nor was a link given. You discredit your conclusions without linking to evidence you relied upon, if online. I'd like to see the Liebling and Thissen responses, given how each scored highly on the "Questionnaire" itself, however scores were calculated, and given my intuitive liking of both individuals from all I know, have seen, and have read.

That said, and in view of the Grass Roots Party core issue, Strib has reported last September an item worth reading in full, beyond this short excerpt of opening paragraphs:

A sleeper issue has emerged among DFL candidates in the 2018 governor’s race: Marijuana.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, state Reps. Erin Murphy, Tina Liebling and Paul Thissen, and U.S. Rep. Tim Walz all support legalizing marijuana for recreational and not just medical use. Among the major DFL candidates, only State Auditor Rebecca Otto declined to do so.

“When you confront the reality of the cost of criminalization vs. the benefits of legalization, I think the benefits outweigh the costs,” said Coleman, whose campaign approached the Star Tribune to discuss the issue.

The candidates’ sudden embrace of marijuana legalization underscores how quickly the issue is moving and illustrates the rapid changes underway in the DFL Party.

That issue has the DFL and GOP starkly opposed on decriminalization and treating cannabis under regulation similar to tabacco and alcohol, each of which is a more dangerous health risk. My key takeaway: Becky Otto is on the wrong side compared to others, and drops in my ranked choice outlook of the candidates for Governor.

Chris Coleman appears to still be seeking DFL endorsement for Governor, but appears to have declined participating in the ORM "Questionnaire" process. As with Walz, he does not greatly ring my bell, others appearing better including Otto despite declining to endorse decriminalization, yet if Coleman ends up endorsed the blessing of being better than any GOP hopeful is as apparent as with Walz.

Unsure of whether precinct caucus ranked choice or other voting on the Governorship question will apply, I remain on a Liebling - Thissen straddle. BOTTOM LINE: The DFL has a good range of office seekers, where Walz, being from a rural Congressional District, has been reported as ahead by a single-source polling report. Early polling being what it is, marginally trustworthy, is more questionable if only one poll is reported and if one declines to spend much time looking into actual question wording to see if a push-poll might be judged to have been used.

End of post. Really. No further updating, here. Enjoy your precinct caucus. [Well, not entirely: adding this Ballotpedia link for a final crescendo.]


_____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
Having found two other online ORM pages of great relevance, this update, the pages being here and here. It seems the "Board" whoever they are, via an ad hoc nightmare, voted with "a majority of the Board" going with three women, with a resolution text:

After much consideration, a majority of The Board of Directors supported this motion for Our Revolution Minnesota Endorsement for Governor:

“Whereas, Our Revolution Minnesota sent a questionnaire to all candidates for Governor and the membership has voted their preference, and

Whereas, the membership was evenly divided between several candidates, and

Whereas, Minnesota has had 40 males serve as Governor, and

Whereas, three women candidates for Governor have shown through their careers and Our Revolution Minnesota survey to be progressive candidates,

Be it resolved, that Our Revolution Minnesota endorses Tina Liebling, Erin Murphy, and Rebecca Otto for Governor of Minnesota and urge our membership with DFL leanings to caucus for one of our endorsed candidates and work in cooperation with all three of the endorsed campaigns to assure that the state DFL convention ends with the endorsement of one of these three women.”

[bolding emphasis added] They had their dumb voting process [however they toted "rank choice"] and when more Erin Murphy elimination votes went for Otto than Liebling, the troika thing was cooked up and done. Those board members really horsed things up for those three women and the hope here is it does not end up hurting Liebling. A great disservice was done to the Our Revolution effort, nationwide, by local amateurs.

They even lacked courage to post a roll call Board vote on that clearly gender-biased resolution. Who are these people, and where were they schooled in fairness and common sense?

You tell me this: Go to that voting spreadsheet and why not just take the first vote, with the four top counts well distanced from the remainder and endorse the three women and Walz? It appears the "majority of the Board" must have thought Walz not progressive nor female enough to do that; and that in the end, they did not want to endorse Becky Otto as winner, so they stepped back from a final vote they did not like to do killer mischief to the entire Our Revolution concept of being progressively fair.

Bernie would be ashamed of how that "majority of the Board" acted, and they discredited themselves as hoax Bernie people.

The shame of the thing is the three women endorsed are each good candidates, but the way gender bias and an unwillingness to go with Becky Otto was handled is scandalous. At least they published on the web what they had done, admitting fault, and removing all doubts. Give them that.

FURTHER: Still steaming mad.  Below is a screencapture from the ORM voting tally spreadsheet:

click the image to enlarge, read and weep

They conveniently note at the end, a six point spread they disliked. Yet first vote, highest to fourth entailed only a four point spread. Ignore the smaller spread, ignore the bigger spread, and spew bullshit?

What a bunch.

_________FURTHER UPDATE [8:35 AM 1/28/2018]_________

NO JOKE: Politicians should know better. How helpful is this video vignette to a presidential dream ticket, Elizabeth Warren - Tulsi Gabbard? Madelaine Albright comes to mind. Exactly how unhelpful was a particular brief commentary of Ms. Albright to Clintonian ego and money driven blind ambitions?

Special place in hell, indeed.

If the aim of this other more recent female career politician's brief but impactful brain-fart was to feed Breitbart fresh meat, mission accomplished, and then some (click and view thumbnail)

With the Mercers having repossessed that Breitbart outlet things are less ham-handed there than while Bannon ran the circus, but lesser gruff does not change the heart of that site's messaging. Why feed a beast?

BOTTOM LINE: The Clintons still do not get it: The Bernie challenge was not about gender, nor charisma, but issues. Bernie was sincere and correct on issues. The general election defeat was not about gender. It was about mediocrity and mendacity vs. mediocrity and mendacity, and the most mediocre and mendacious of two trumped the other side's gender-bias gamesmanship. Disasters usually entail learning curves. Not always.

FURTHER: Making hay while the sun shines. Read it and weep. Weep for every progressive issue-oriented woman seeking office. Including Otto, Murphy and Liebling.

FOCUS ON ISSUES, EVERYBODY, PLEASE, AND MAY THE MOST PROGRESSIVE DFL CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR REGARDLESS OF GENDER WIN THE GENERAL ELECTION. A feeling here is a Becky Otto general election candidacy will be undermined by some within her own party on the Iron Range, or at the least given cold comfort there to where the GOP could win. If the DFL chooses Otto, great, it is worth the risk; bring it on. The risk with Liebling might be less but it might also be as great or greater. The three women ORM focused upon is not the issue here, it is the how and why of how ORM proceeded and whether there is a place for that to happen without attention, criticism, and disapproval.

WWBS? What Would Bernie Say? HWBF? How Would Bernie Feel?

____________FURTHER UPDATE___________
After looking it up to be certain, Janet Reno was the first woman to serve as Attorney General, and Madelaine Albright first woman Secretary of State. Great as gender breakthroughs, but my complaint against them is as with the Clintons - we had Republican-lite in those offices, Albright having her regime-change Balkan War, Reno having the Weaver murders and the Waco church burnout in her portfolio. Progressivism is the aim. Elizabeth Warren as an Attorney General and Tulsi Gabbard as a Secretary of State [perhaps better, Secretary of Defense] would light my fire. Each would be great if any such appointment were made in the future. If Tina Liebling were to run a primary against Betty McCollum and win it would reflect back to the Vento tenure and it would be refreshing to then currently have a true progressive in both the Fourth and Fifth Districts. A Congressional candidate need not reside in the district where running, so Murphy, Liebling, Otto - if not becoming the next Minnesota governor, consider giving that option a shot.

Gender is NOT the point.

For example, male gender: An abiding fear of corporatism dominating progressivism in the Dem Party future is held here, and is focused upon possible Biden or John Kerry [again] being trotted out and run for President, where each is too corporate to like very much. We should want Bernie over either. Warren over either. "On the issues" progressives. Not Rockefeller-Republican GOP-lite.

__________FURTHER UPDATE____________
An explanatory note at Mashable explains the Clinton statement was inspired by a consultancy name chosen for unclear reasons by someone seated next to Ms. Clinton mentioning the consultancy and asking for a shout-out. That shades the remark a bit but still it was unwise. I suppose I could found a consultancy and call it "Pyromaniacs for Jesus," but would anyone have the public-candidacy-honed judgment to give a shout-out? Hopefully, not.