October 31, 2002
ON NOT GOING GENTLY:
Making of a Minnesota Debacle (Howard Kurtz, October 31, 2002, Washington Post)How badly can a political party screw up a memorial service?Just ask Minnesota's Democrats.
They staged a public farewell for Paul Wellstone that was so over the top, so blatantly partisan, that Jesse Ventura walked out.
"I feel used," the independent governor said afterward. "I feel violated and duped over the fact that it turned into a political rally. . . . I think the Democrats should hang their head in shame."
How did it come to this? It should have been a piece of cake for the DFLers to honor Wellstone in a dignified way, setting the stage for Walter Mondale to accept the nomination last night. After all, 20,000 people showed up. After all, Mondale was riding a wave of emotion without having done a single thing. After all, a new poll has Mondale up 8 points over Norm Coleman.
Instead, Ventura was booed at the service, as was Trent Lott. What sensitivity! They show up to honor a man from a different political party and they're razzed like the opposing team at a Vikings game. In effect, the service was hijacked in a small-minded way that detracted from the memory of Wellstone.
Actually, isn't it fair to assume that it was intentionally small-minded, with no hijacking required? And isn't that the necessary implication after Democrats defended it for two days (until polls showed it to be a disaster)? Posted by Orrin Judd at October 31, 2002 3:59 PM
as usual this panned out as we expected. The Republicans sat back and basically did the right thing in not campaigning for 3-4 days, based on common decency. They did this knowing full well this would probably mean the end of their hopes for a victory in MN. They played by the rules which hinge on, in the end, a faith in outcome. The dems, as usual, wants to "stuff" the outcome, and based on their need to do this they may have stuffed it too much. But probably not.
The dems would say we do the same, blah, blah, blah. But the thing is, whenever the dems have a chance they do it, and whenever we have a chance, we don't.
Their acts of desperation will and have paid off. And their continued repulsive leadership (Clinton, Clinton, Daschle, McCauliffe) grows with these total windbags (Lautenberg and Mondale taking office) when we had a chance to remove Torricelli and Wellstone from office forever.
Neil:
The point is this: just because the Democrats are whores, should the rest of us rush out to buy knee pads and a bottle of mouth wash?