DWT picked up on a Strib item which drew an earlier Crabgrass focus. From DWT:
Thursday, September 24, 2020
In Minnesota, The GOP Is Running On Bigotry And Against Masks And Wayfair
Minnesota is closing in on 100,000 COVID cases and will get there before election day.
Despite a significant and ongoing investment in the state by the Trump campaign, the margin between Trump and Biden continues to grow-- against Trump. The Real Cleat Politics polling average shows Biden up 10.2%-- 51.6% to 41.4%, which has got to be a big letdown for Trump since Hillary barely beat him in 2016-- 1,367,716 (46.44%) to 1,322,951 (44.92%). On the kind of electoral map Trump understands better than numbers, he looks like he could have won the state because he did so well in rural areas and the map is pretty red:
The Minnesota poll by Langer that came out yesterday-- from the Washington Post and ABC News-- shows Trump losing spectacularly among likely voters-- 41% to Biden's 57%. That's a 16 point margin.
Maybe Trump thinks the way to flatten that curve-- since he sure ain't flattening' the other one-- is to use his own brand of bigotry, racism and misogyny to attack Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Minnesotans, however, enjoy a good fight and Ilhan sure bested Trump on their latest match. She delivered a pretty devastating comeback to The Donald after his dog-whistle attack on her Somali origins at his Pennsylvania rally Tuesday night. Trump’s racist fans jeered Omar’s name when he mentioned it outside Pittsburgh, apparently making him feel bold enough to say: "She’s telling us how to run our country. How did you do where you came from? How was your country doing?"
Jamie Ross for the Daily Beast: "Omar, who was born in Somalia but left as a kid and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, hit back: 'Firstly, this is my country and I am a member of the House that impeached you. Secondly, I fled civil war when I was 8. An 8-year-old doesn’t run a country even though you run our country like one.' As the pièce de résistance, she posted the Mean Girls gif of Regina George asking the pertinent question: 'Why are you so obsessed with me?'"
Minnesota elected a Democratic governor and a Democratic state House, where they told 75 seats to the Republicans' 55. (There are also 4 "New Republicans.") But the State Senate is a problem. The GOP has 35 seats to the Democrats' 32. The state party's and the DLCC's efforts to flip the Senate are being helped by the Minnesota Republican Party is veering off-track and into conspiracy theory and fascism territory.
Writing for the Star-Tribune, Stephen Montemayor reported that "At least a half-dozen Minnesota Republicans running for state legislative seats in November have promoted the sprawling, false QAnon conspiracy that claims Satanists and pedophiles run the government and that COVID-19 is part of a plot to steal the election. Once a fringe fiction, QAnon is quickly seeping into mainstream Republican politics as scores of GOP candidates across the country express support for it. Among them are six candidates endorsed by the Minnesota Republican Party for state House and Senate seats from the Iron Range to the metro suburbs. In some cases, Minnesota candidates have used official social media pages for their campaigns to post slogans in support of QAnon, which the FBI has warned is a conspiracy theory that could inspire domestic terrorism or violence. Some posts include references to a 'Great Awakening' or 'The Storm,' a prophesied reckoning in which elected officials, journalists and other members of 'the Deep State' are rounded up for imprisonment or execution."
[...]
Trump tweeted. In response, Omar ate his lunch.