It's primary election day in Minnesota. I always feel, walking out of the polling place, like the Norman Rockwell figure shown here, probably a result of having picked up a lot of schmaltzy ideas in my days as a Cub Scout. While proceeding down the DFL side of the ballot, like all my neighbors here in the People's Republic of South Minneapolis, it occurred to me that I wasn't choosing many of the DFL-endorsed candidates. I think the reason is that they're chosen by the party's most activist members, who in my humble opinion are susceptible to infatuations with what I consider to be "boutique candidates"--defined, roughly, as someone whose appeal rests largely on the number of demographic check boxes they can fill. Okay, fine, admitted, point granted, white guys are responsible for the current sorry state of affairs. That's because the Republican party, largely a kind of white grievance party, is in power despite having gone completely 'round the bend, and the thing is to beat all their candidates by running against them Democrats who will win. I'm all about "electability." In our governor's race, my views--on gun laws, for sure--are probably closest to those of Erin Murphy, the endorsed candidate. But I'm afraid that a female St. Paul liberal who touts her F-rating from the NRA would get beat up outside of Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, so I voted for Tim Walz. He's fine and more apt to win.
I just read over that paragraph and feel that "female St. Paul liberal" is a bad phrase, but I'm not striking it. The other side routinely refers to Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic mother of five whose voting record is that of a standard-issue Democrat, as "a San Francisco liberal," and it works: they know what they're doing. (Among other things, appealing to anti-gay bigotry.) Let's be realistic about how the game is being played, what works, what wins, and, in the meantime, push for ranked choice voting, so that we don't have to make these miserable calculations.
How about Trump and Omarosa? The easy observation would be that they deserve each other. Maybe Trump finally found someone less credible than himself to fight with! Although so far, with her tapes, she seems to be getting the better of it. Everyone is talking about Trump's tweet this morning in which he calls her a "dog." Yes, it's vulgar and in a former time beneath presidential dignity, but, to me, it also sounds false and unnatural, inasmuch as calling a woman a "dog" is generally done to indicate she's ugly, which Omarosa is not: the Trump administration wouldn't be paying an ugly African-American woman with only reality-TV qualifications 180 k per year to advise the president. (Plus, I trust my own eyes.) I suspect his impulse was to call her a "bitch," but he realized that would be bad, so he settled on "dog" as a substitute. If I'm right, it's an instance of self-editing on the part of Donald Trump. Praise the Lord for gently raining down his tender mercies!
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