We had a primary election here in Minnesota yesterday. The drama was all on the Democratic side, where in the governor's race Mark Dayton (boosted by Amanda's vote) edged Margaret Anderson Kelliher, whom the DFL party (and Amanda's husband) had backed, by around 4000 votes. Meanwhile, Crazy Tom Emmer, running unopposed for governor on the Republican side of the ballot, celebrated his "victory" at one of St. Paul's more well-known watering holes. I'm not sure the venue helped Emmer, who has been hammered in TV ads recounting his two arrests, ten years apart, for driving under the influence and his more recent efforts, as a legislator, to lighten penalties for drunk driving. For crimes Emmer hasn't committed, his views are presumably more in line with lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key, 3-strikes-and-yer-out Republican boilerplate.
"Will you help me take back our state?" Emmer roared. On the radio, the assembled did not sound very eager. "Take it back from whom?" I imagined them to be thinking. Minnesota has not had a Democratic governor for 20 years and has been led, for the last eight, by a Republican, Tim Pawlenty, who is probably not as crazy as Emmer but, being a Republican and ambitious, is obliged to act as if he is.
Nothing Emmer says makes any sense. I wonder whether either of the officers who arrested him for drunk driving looked in the glove box. It might have been Emmer's last chance to develop an enlightened opinion.
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