Almanac: At the Capitol

The DCCC just released a poll of the 3rd District:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee today released a Bennett Petts & Normington survey of 400 likely voters in Minnesota’s third Congressional district found Iraq war veteran Ashwin Madia with a solid lead over Republican politician Erik Paulsen. The head to head shows Madia with 44 percent of the vote to Paulsen’s 39 percent, while Independence candidate David Dillon takes 8 percent — 9 percent remain undecided. The survey was conducted September 29 - 30 and has a 4.9 percent margin of error.

Madia’s lead, obviously, is within the margin of error, but the result is encouraging none the less. It means the Republican tactics of September (smear, smear, play the race card and then smear some more) have not worked.

No wonder Paulsen is getting desperate.

This debate was a lot of fun.

Before it all started, people were lining up well more than two hours before doors opened. About a half hour before doors opened, the Coleman campaign had a chartered bus that dropped off a group of people with signs and prepared cheers to chant at the people who were in line. The people in line, by the way, were by far mostly Franken supporters: at least 90%. Some Coleman supporters were escorted by a Coleman volunteer or staffer to join other Coleman supporters in the front of the line. A few Coleman supporters chanted “four more years!” until they heard everyone laughing at them. “It’s six years,” a Franken button-wearer chimed. The busload of Coleman supporters also had huge letters that spelled out “NORM” and the “N” and the “O” wandered off to another side and everyone in line started laughing and chanting “NO! NO! No, Norm!” This group then gathered near the door at the front of the line then charged the doors when they opened, cutting off everyone who was waiting for an hour and a half. It was shameless, arrogant and childish. Everyone in line was upset at first, but then it turned into jokes about how this is the kind of campaign Coleman’s running. I took photos and I’ll post about it if I have extra time — it was a pathetic, dirty play by Team Coleman.

As a result, for the most part Coleman supporters were in the middle section and Franken supporters were the rest of the auditorium. I saw about four Barkley supporters total. Actually, there were two anti-Barkley protesters in Tyvek suits and face masks handing out literature about Barkley’s negative lobbyist past.

The debates themselves were easy to sum up: Barkley was really all over the place, Coleman was a very smooth but lied repeatedly and Franken was the calmest and in my opinion, won the debate. 

Barkley was really nuts. At first, he was needing questions repeated, got confused easily and while he wanted to talk about energy issues, when an opportunity came to him to speak for another minute on energy issues he said he said everything he wanted to say and forfeited his time. Franken interjected with a smile that he’d take that extra minute to talk more about energy. Barkley proved he is by no means a serious candidate by sounding unprepared and not really understanding the issues he was talking about. I’d write more on this now but it’s worth its own post.

Coleman started by saying he’s angry and that all three candidates were angry. Wasn’t Coleman’s strategy trying to pin Franken as the “angry” one? Throughout the debate, Barkley was actually the one that sounded angry (and mean, for that matter). But now that Coleman declared it, we now have “Angry Norm” and “Angry Dean” to deal with.

Coleman said he was opposed to the first bailout plan when he actually wasn’t. He charged that Franken doesn’t support drilling. Coleman lied by saying that both Franken and Barkley would cut off funding for our troops. He tried to champion funding for higher education when he voted against them. These lies were a bit of a mess in regards to Franken needing to take time away and retort and point out some of these falsehoods. Perhaps it was a Coleman strategy but I think it really played into Franken’s favor.

One of the things I found most interesting though was Coleman’s demeanor. There were many times where Coleman, sitting directly to Franken’s right, would turn and look right at him while he was speaking, even if his face was a foot away from Franken’s as if he was staring him down. When he wasn’t doing that, Coleman continually seemed nervous.

Here was my favorite part of the debate, as recorded by The UpTake: It’s about negative ads and Franken and Coleman talk about what their ads are about. Barkley tries to say the ads are helping him (although he doesn’t mention that his first radio ads were also negative). Also watch how nervous Coleman is:

Overall, a great debate and yes, I know I might be biased, but in my best judgement Franken really did win this one hands down. I can’t wait for the next four. You can watch the entire debate courtesy of The UpTake.

UPDATE: MPR’s Mark Zdechlik has a fantastic recap of the debate and The UpTake posted individual videos of all the segments of the debate:

The Economist did a survey (emphasis mine):

Our survey is not, by any means, a scientific poll of all economists. We e-mailed a questionnaire to 683 research associates, all we could track down, of the National Bureau of Economic Research, America’s premier association of applied academic economists, though the NBER itself played no role in the survey. A total of 142 responded, of whom 46% identified themselves as Democrats, 10% as Republicans and 44% as neither. This skewed party breakdown may reflect academia’s Democratic tilt, or possibly Democrats’ greater propensity to respond. Still, even if we exclude respondents with a party identification, Mr Obama retains a strong edge—though the McCain campaign should be buoyed by the fact that 530 economists have signed a statement endorsing his plans.
…
The detailed responses are bad news for Mr McCain (the full data are available here). Eighty per cent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr Obama has the better grasp of the subject. “I take McCain’s word on this one,” comments James Harrigan at the University of Virginia, a reference to Mr McCain’s infamous confession that he does not know as much about economics as he should. In fairness, Mr McCain’s lower grade may in part reflect greater candour about his weaknesses. Mr Obama’s more tightly managed image leaves fewer opportunities for such unvarnished introspection.

I’m off to Rochester to attend the first debate between Al Franken, Norm Coleman and Dean Barkley. I’m not going to “live blog” because if you have access to a computer or a radio, you can listen or even watch the debate yourself without needing a blog to tell you what’s going on! Although, I may post extraordinary things from the debate on my personal Twitter account.

Minnesota Public Radio’s News and Information Service and WCCO Radio will have audio and The UpTake will have streaming video. Tune in. It’ll be fun. If you’re in the Rochester area, show up:

7:00 P.M. - RCTC Sports Center, 851 30th Ave SE

Attend if you can. If not, tune in!

While a nine point lead for Franken is a bit of a jump, it does match the trending of every poll minus the recent KSTP poll. From the Star Tribune:

For Coleman, there is little good news in the poll. The number of voters who view him unfavorably continues to grow, the number who see him favorably is falling, and his job-approval rating has slipped to 38 percent — his lowest ever in the Minnesota Poll.

Coleman led Franken by four points in last month’s Minnesota Poll.

Read the whole story here.

Also, the Star Tribune writes that “Coleman loser in bad ad competition”:

According to the poll, 56 percent of likely voters think that ads criticizing Franken are unfair. That’s compared with 42 percent of likely voters who scolded the Franken camp for unfair ads aimed at Coleman.

The bottom line? The poll shows that 45 percent of likely voters say the ads don’t make a difference to them, one way or the other. But 20 percent said the ads made them more likely to vote for Franken, while 12 percent said they were more likely to back Coleman.

Unbelievable footage from a MN GOP Press Conference this week:

The shocking quote from MN GOP Chair Ron Carey:

“I’m just saying from a demographic standpoint, Erik Paulsen fits the district very well”

Translation: Erik Paulsen is white and Ashwin Madia is not.  Suburban voters beware.

This press conference reveals the sad truth: The MN GOP and the Paulsen campaign are so terrified of losing this race, so desperate to win, they will play the race card shamelessly and repeatedly.

How absolutely embarrassing for the Minnesota Republican Party and Erik Paulsen. If I were a Republican voter in Minnesota I would be ashamed to hear my party resort to such despicable tactics.

If there is a silver lining in this whole debacle, its the Minnesota political press corps. Those reporters were not willing to let Carey and Sen. Geoff Michel get away with using racial code words and racist undertones. Kudos to them.

The more I look into Norm Coleman’s connections with the Save A Life Foundation (SALF), the more curious I get. Last week, Scott Wente in the Detroit Lakes Tribune had an interesting commentary:

Take the example of a recent news tip about little-known legislation authored two years ago by U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. The Minnesota Republican wanted to spend $40 million to help teach children basic first aid.

…

An emergency training organization with a controversial leader claimed it sought the legislation, had Coleman’s support and expected to reap funding from the program. That organization, Save A Life Foundation, operates out of Illinois and while it administers training in a number of states, has little affiliation with Minnesota.

Additionally, there was no detailed explanation for why the Coleman-backed program deemed important enough to pass Congress never got off the ground. And, perhaps most interesting to taxpayers, it was not clear whether Coleman or federal officials worked to prevent Save A Life from getting public money once it became embroiled in controversy months later.

It’s bizarre because Save A Life’s head, Carol Spizzirri, is a liar about her bio:

Spizzirri says she got her nursing degree in Wisconsin. Currently, Save-A-Life’s website and her bio claim, not only that she is an RN, but that she specializes in kidney transplants. The I-Team asked if that is true.

“Not at this time,” Spizzirri said. “I no longer have. I haven’t registered in a number of years.”

According to state officials, the now-defunct Wisconsin college where Spizzirri claims to have received a nursing degree never awarded her a degree of any kind, and government records show she has never been registered as a nurse in either Wisconsin, as she told the I-Team she was, or in Illinois.

There’s a lot more after the jump…

She’s also a liar about the pricing of what Save A Life does:

The president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, a watchdog organization of medical professionals, says that federal and state funding agencies have been defrauded by Spizzirri’s claims that she has a nursing degree and license.

“It’s free to the children. We bring this course to schools for free,” Spizzirri said.

But it wasn’t free to the Chicago Public Schools, where officials say Save-A-Life charged them $50,000 the past two years.

Schools CEO Arnie Duncan says it seems unlikely that Carol Spizzirri’s organization could have taught the number of students they claim, and it’s not free to the taxpayers, who give Save-A-Life more than $1 million a year through the Homeland Security department, Centers For Disease Control and the State of Illinois.

“If you have an organization that has mostly volunteers, where’s the million dollars going?” said Baratz. “It doesn’t take a million dollars to print a pamphlet.”

She’s also a liar about her motivation for the organization:

“My daughter was coming home from work on Labor Day of ‘92. She was struck by a hit-and-run, and her arm had been severely injured, and she bled to death before EMS arrived,” said Spizzirri.

But even that isn’t true, according to police and hospital reports and an inquest by the Lake County coroner. The official record states that 18-year-old Christina Spizzirri was legally drunk at the time of the accident; and that after hosting a drinking party while her mother was vacationing in Florida, the teenager got behind the wheel and flipped her own car.

Police records show there was no hit-and-run, and even though the local police didn’t know emergency first aid, the teenager did not die at the scene as Carol Spizzirri contends. Medical records state that Christina died 30 minutes after arriving at the hospital.

I-Team: “It was not a hit and run, was it?”

Spizzirri: “Yes, it was. Oh, my gosh. I got proof of that, absolutely … I’m done, the interview’s over.”

On the television version of the interview, she literally took off her microphone and left the room.

Why was Norm Coleman working to get this organization $40 Million? I’m not sure, but Carol Spizzirri is tight with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a group that is very tight with Norm Coleman.

The bill Coleman introduced was called the Community Response System Initiative (CRSI) Act of 2006, which contained authorization for ”$10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2007 through 2010 to carry out [the] Act.”

An annual report seems to confirm that the money was dedicated to SALF:

Earlier this year, the U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted the Community Response Systems Initiative (CRSI) Resolution, named in honor of Christina Spizzirri, committing their support to SALF as a foundation for emergency preparing their communities. Thereafter U.S. Senator Norm Coleman (MN), sponsored the “CRSI ACT” to assist in this initiative.

Scott Wente’s commentary raises a few questions:

 — Did Coleman author the legislation with the foundation in mind?

I would say most certainly so.

 — Since lawmakers like to talk about how they help their constituents, did Coleman believe Minnesota children could benefit from the legislation?

I would strongly doubt that, although embattled Burnsville mayor Elizabeth B. Kautz is part of the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and has met with Spizzirri. That’s about it, though.

 — Did Coleman or federal officials make sure Save A Life did not get federal funds after news reports suggested the group’s leadership had made false claims? Certainly that itself would be newsworthy, particularly given the public’s interest in congressional spending.

Norm Coleman doing oversight? Ha ha ha. In fact, the Save A Life Foundation website still has a ”Affiliate of Citizen Corps” logo at the top, implying they have good standing with the Department of Homeland Security.

The good news is that Coleman’s Act died before reaching committee. But why was he trying to get a $40 Million earmark for a shady Illinois non-profit in the first place?

A new KSTP poll yesterday pointed to Coleman having an out-of-the-blue ten point lead. I couldn’t make sense of it. Luckily, KSTP released all the cross-tabs from the poll in a PDF. Ages 18-34 went 44% to Coleman and 33% to Franken? Only 65% of Democrats are voting DFL? 26% of pro-choice voters are voting Coleman? Here’s the weirdest part though: the same poll has McCain beating Obama in Minnesota. Meanwhile, averaging out every other presidential poll done in Minnesota during September has Obama up by 4 points. So yeah, the KSTP poll seems fishy to me too.

Meanwhile, a poll taken for the DSCC shows Franken up by two points:

If the November 2008 general election for U.S. Senate were held today and the candidates were Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Al Franken, Republican Norm Coleman, and Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley, for whom would you vote, or are you undecided?

While I am reluctant to light the fireworks and have a balloon drop after a poll commissioned by the DSCC, the results certainly match the trending of all the previous polls while the KSTP poll definitely does not.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Of course, how the bailout was handled will certainly change things. Coleman parroted the White House talking points and voted for an unpopular bill that doesn’t contain the kind of real help to fix the root problems that got us into this economic mess. Franken stuck to principles and has continually shown leadership on the subject. Barkley, meanwhile, completely screwed up politically: while it was clearly populist to be against the bill, he was for it, then against it, and then for it again. Trying to be an “anti-Washington” candidate isn’t going to work out for him. As well, Barkley for months has been denouncing “negative campaigning” and talking about how it only helps him — then he went ahead and started making negative ads himself. If Barkely can’t get the “positive campaign” vote or the “anti-Washington” vote, what does he have left? It certainly won’t play very well for him in the debate on Sunday. I can’t wait.

Franni Franken: Al “Stood By Me Through Thick And Thin.”

An overall great piece on the bailout positions from Star Tribune’s Patricia Lopez:

Franken said he would have voted against the compromise bill and held out for additional oversight, re-regulation of markets and foreclosure aid for the ailing housing market.

Regulatory reform, he said, is a fundamental requirement of government, “not a nuisance to be eliminated in favor of Wild West profiteering.”

He would, Franken said, work for stronger oversight of corporations, an end to failed, voluntary regulation programs that allowed Wall Street to opt in or out of supervision; a temporary freeze on foreclosures and a requirement that lenders work with borrowers, “not set them up to be victims.”

Here’s where it gets funny though:

Coleman spokesman Mark Drake said Coleman opposed that first, rudimentary, three-page proposal, although he could not explain why Coleman had been quoted last week describing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as quarterbacks in need of support.

“They’re calling the play,” Coleman said in a story that appeared in the Morris Times last Wednesday. “And we have to run the play. We’re all there, the folks in the huddle and we’re working with them on the play, but we have to run the play.”

Coleman said earlier today that he opposed the original plan, but believes the current version has the necessary safeguards.

Coleman supported the original three-page bailout plan, after his two-day silence on the issue and got his talking points. Then Coleman talks football about it, then comes out and today says he was against the old plan. He says it has the “necessary safeguards.” It doesn’t, though. 

I almost feel bad about Coleman’s lack of understanding of this and having to rely almost completely on what other people are telling him to say. Well, I guess I feel bad for him in a “I feel bad for Sarah Palin” kind of way. 

Read the whole piece at the Star Tribune.

He hasn’t aged a day in over a decade, but even Homer Simpson wants change…

Al Franken laid out his concerns and requirements for the proposed bailout package last week and in its current form, Franken said today that he would oppose the bill. He’s sticking to his word:

Last night the United States Senate voted to take $700 billion from taxpayers who did nothing wrong and offer it as a sacrifice at the altar of financial mismanagement. This bill doesn’t fix an economy that isn’t working for middle class families. This bill doesn’t even fix the damage that’s been done in the last eight years. It is, in fact, the exclamation point on eight years of the worst stewardship of our economy since Herbert Hoover. A terrible end to a terrible presidency. And if we don’t face up to what’s gone wrong – if, at this sad moment in our history, we fail to recognize what is still wrong with our economy and take concrete steps to fix it – then this will not be the last time Minnesota taxpayers are asked to clean up someone else’s mess.

This isn’t a big surprise. If a plan were to be worked out that would actually fix the problem including having real oversight (instead of just oversight on how the money is spent), didn’t have all the loopholes for “golden parachutes,” and doing more to help consumers and homeowners, Franken would have been for it. In a speech today, Franken compared by saying “”we were trying to drain a basement that is filled with water and it’s raining out and we have a roof with a huge hole in it. We’re draining the basement without fixing the roof.” Franken’s also did not blame Coleman (or Klobuchar, for that matter) for voting for it, saying it was a very difficult decision, but did blame Coleman for supporting the no-regulation philosophy of the Bush administration that was likely the largest factor in creating this mess.

Meanwhile, Coleman ended up saying that the bill in its previous form was “not acceptable.” Strange. Just last week he said “we have our quarterbacks in there — Henry Paulson and Bernanke — and they’re calling the play. And we have to run the play.” DFL Chair Brian Melendez said: 

Senator Coleman has been caught in yet another lie. A day after he voted to approve $700 billion in taxpayer money to clean up the mess that he and his sponsors helped make on Wall Street, Norm Coleman is claiming that he opposed the original proposal, though his statements in the past week show instead that he supported it.

The truth is that Senator Coleman supported George W. Bush every step of the way in the bailout, just as he has for the last six years. Norm Coleman still doesn’t get it: the Bush administration’s failed economic policies caused this crisis. And Coleman’s lock-step support of those policies has Minnesotans ready to fire him. I see why he wants to distance himself from his record, but the facts speak for themselves.

I may disagree with Melendez here. Melendez says that Coleman’s lying, I think Coleman doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. Either way, Coleman screwed up his talking points.

Franken has been showing some real leadership these last couple weeks while Coleman continues to prove over and over again that he doesn’t really know what’s up.

More on Franken and the bailout at his blog.

Why?  Because at this point expectations for her are so low she would have to drool on stage to lose.  The Obama campaign has been trying to raise expectations by sending around footage of Palin debating during the Alaska Governor’s race.  It’s been getting some play on the cable nets, but I think its too little, too late.

Of course, there is a counter-argument to this theory.  Phil Singer has more:

Under normal circumstances, the candidate of low expectations should generally be regarded as the favorite going into a debate. But this campaign is anything but normal and Palin’s expectations are so low that it’s going to be tough for her to exceed them unless she turns in an unequivocally bravura performance.

If the Palin that shows up tonight even remotely resembles the Palin we saw on CBS this week, it’s done. All it takes is one 15 second moment…

…The media is on red alert for Palin to flub and it won’t take much to push them into reporting that she did. That’s an extraordinary amount of pressure for a candidate - Biden would be in a similar position if McCain had picked someone else since the pundits would be on the lookout for him to gaffe it up.

Singer has a good point. But I think there are many reasons to believe that Palin won’t deliver that 15 second moment he talks about. This debate, with its rigid time limits and ban on candidate interaction, is more congruent to the scripted convention speech that Palin aced than the unscripted interviews she has flubbed. Moreover, the McCain campaign (with the assistance of one Matt Drudge) was very successful in pushing the “moderator is biased” story yesterday. Will Gwen Ifill be more reluctant to ask Palin the sort of “pop quiz” questions that have given her so much trouble in the interview format? Will Ifill be more reluctant to follow up with Palin if she gives a fluff non-answer? Finally, and this has been well documented throughout the mainstream media, Joe Biden has decided (wisely, I think) to avoid challenging or confronting Palin during the debate. He is going to keep his focus on McCain; taking no risk of becoming a Rick Lazio figure.  Taken together, this means that Palin will probably be able to regurgitate her prepared answers with total impunity.

One last point: many people in the media will say that tonight’s debate doesn’t matter. They are right, but they are also dead wrong. They are right in that even a Palin meltdown is not likely to move the polls much, but the polls aren’t the metric to watch here. After the Palin selection, GOP base enthusiasm surged. That meant more volunteers at phone banks and door knocks and more money in donations. If Palin scores tonight, I would expect renewed enthusiasm among the Republican faithful. If she falls on her face, the opposite could happen.

This is very, very good news.

A measure long championed by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and Rep. Jim Ramstad to require mental health parity in insurance policies has been attached to the $700 billion financial relief plan that the Senate is scheduled to vote on tonight.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in a statement that the mental health provision is one reason she decided to vote for the bailout bill. “The legislation establishes parity in insurance coverage for mental health benefits, a matter of fairness and dignity that Paul Wellstone long fought for,” she said.

Many health insurance plans now provide far less coverage for treating mental illnesses than for physical treatments.

I would have liked to see this bill pass on its own, but its been almost six years since Paul died and at this point I’ll take it anyway I can get it.

You know the McCain campaign is in trouble when one of the country’s top political reporters is already considering who might be the Republican frontrunner in 2012…

The betting money is on Mitt Romney for his governing experience, talented pool of political operatives, facility with the economy and his, well, money.

But this column thinks that Mike Huckabee has an equally plausible shot. He’d be the most formidable opponent for Obama, other than Gen.Petraeus — perhaps Obama will neutralize the Petraeus threat by making him head of the joint chiefs and befriending him as much as possible.

Ambinder also mentions Newt Gingrich as a possible ‘12 contender. That means, in Ambinder’s eyes, the top GOP contenders are Huckabee, Romney and Gingrich. Really? I mean…really? If that really is the field, I predict that Barack Obama will be the first candidate since George Washington to win the electoral college unanimously.

Not mentioned by Ambinder is our very own Tim Pawlenty. I would be surprised in T-Paw didn’t run in 2012, but Republicans have a bizarre habit of nominating the candidate who finished second last time. So maybe Timmy has to run in ‘12 to be a player in ‘16. Personally, I think Timmy’s chances are partially tied to Sarah Palin’s. If she continues to implode over the next thirty days, I think Pawlenty has a better chance for two reasons. First, there is only so much oxygen in the room. A field that includes Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich and Palin is already pretty crowded. Is there room for Pawlenty? Of course, if she continues to bomb on the campaign trail, she won’t be a factor in ‘12. Second, Pawlenty was the runner up in the veepstakes. If Palin doesn’t pull out of this tailspin, she’s going to get some of the blame for a McCain loss. People are going to say, “McCain should have picked Pawlenty.” That’ll give him something of an opening.

Sound The Alarm!

Warning: this is a rant.

I’ve just about had it.  Look, this bailout plan is anything but perfect.  It’s rushed, flawed, and has too many vote-grabbing concessions, but this is NOT the time to let perfect get in the way of good.  The sky is falling people and we, and our leaders, are just looking up with gaping mouths.  I think Friedman has done the best job so far of explaining all this in a simple way:

Well, you say, “I don’t own any stocks — let those greedy monsters on Wall Street suffer.” You may not own any stocks, but your pension fund owned some Lehman Brothers commercial paper and your regional bank held subprime mortgage bonds, which is why you were able refinance your house two years ago. And your local airport was insured by A.I.G., and your local municipality sold municipal bonds on Wall Street to finance your street’s new sewer system, and your local car company depended on the credit markets to finance your auto loan — and now that the credit market has dried up, Wachovia bank went bust and your neighbor lost her secretarial job there.

We’re all connected. As others have pointed out, you can’t save Main Street and punish Wall Street anymore than you can be in a rowboat with someone you hate and think that the leak in the bottom of the boat at his end is not going to sink you, too. The world really is flat. We’re all connected. “Decoupling” is pure fantasy.

Other than his shameless plug of his own phrase, “the world is flat,” Friedman is dead on here.  And I think people are underestimating the severity of the problem here.  This is not 1999 .com bubble burst, this is not post-9/11 market hit, this is not a “blip” that will soon be corrected.  This is at best the beginning of a significant recession and at worst the beginning of a depression that will realign the global financial system.  Either way we need action.

Congress is putting front and center all the reasons this Country no longer believes in it.  And it’s right in our back-yard too: Walz, Peterson, Ramstad and Bachmann need to get in line or get out.  I appreciate the political pressures here, but man alive(!), we’re not dealing with an immigration bill here or the farm bill or the resolution on BS, we’re talking about the very viability of our economy!

Whether he formulated this speach out of political considerations or his personal convictions (I truly believe its the latter), Obama was dead on yesterday:

Even with all these taxpayer protections, this plan is not perfect. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have legitimate concerns about it. I know many Americans share those concerns. But it is clear that this is what we must do right now to prevent a crisis from turning into a catastrophe. That’s why I’ve been reaching out to leaders in both parties to do whatever I can to help pass this plan. That’s why I’ll be flying back to Washington today to cast my vote to safeguard the American economy. And to the Democrats and Republicans who have opposed this plan, I say – step up to the plate and do what’s right for the country, because the time to act is now.

Congress, take notes, because that’s leadership.

Addendum: For the last week when people would ask my thoughts about the bailout plan I would simply reply that I couldn’t possibly pretend to have enough of an understanding of the complex issues involved or enough information to evaluate the underlying forces at play to come to a competent decision on the matter. Instead, I was willing to allow Paulsen, Frank, Dodd, Bernanke and other lead officials to be the experts here. There’s no doubt that their schedules have been 100% booked with the best experts, the best briefings, and the smartest minds available on this issue; this is why we delegate authority to them. Call it foolish, but I trust in them to parse this information because I don’t have the resources to do so myself. So, the above rant is a reaction not to the sound-bites and traded barbs of the last week, but to the fact that the experts we’ve delegated authority have determined that this is the best course of action. And, credible minds seem to agree that, while not perfect, this is a must. Again, call me foolish for investing my trust in these men, but I ask you whether it is any less foolish to presume that each of us can be experts on the subject.

It has bothered me that many Coleman and NRSC ads attacking Franken use clips of Franken verbally denouncing the tactics used by many Republicans. It’s a bit twisted. For example, at a Howard Dean fundraiser, Franken talks about how “shameless” these people are and Coleman and the NRSC turn around and shamelessly use the clip to say something else. Another clip shows Al Franken asking Michael Medved “to apologize” because Medved was lying on the air. They turn it around as if people should be upset that Franken asked someone to apologize for lying. If only all these little clips Coleman and the NRSC used showed the whole context — it would certainly work against them.

Lately they’ve been using clips and photos referencing Paul Wellstone.

First, this still:

It appears in Coleman’s “Watchdog” and “No Accountability Al” ads and is from this photo by Gregory Bull/Associated Press:

Out of all the possible shots of Franken, this one predominately features the popular photo of Wellstone. That photo is the cover of “Twelve Years and Thirteen Days: Remembering Paul and Sheila Wellstone.”

In the NRSC ads “Unfit,” “Too Far” and in a few other spots there’s clips of Franken shouting “you can take this guy, you can take him! You can take this guy!” with his right arm swinging a bit. Out of context, they construe this to mean Al’s “angry.” In fact, it is the contrary. Franken is retelling a story by imitating Paul Wellstone. As many people that have heard Franken know, it’s a story about Wellstone’s son David when he was running cross country. Wellstone sometimes would run along side David and shout, “you can take this guy! You can take him, you can take this guy!” It’s a story about Wellstone’s tenacity. It’s a story about having someone run alongside you. It’s not about anger at all.

MinnPost has a nice bit about the story Franken retells:

Franken got ‘em with an uncanny imitation of the late Paul Wellstone. 

Franken told the Minnesota delegates about a conversation he recently had with the late senator’s son, David. It seems that when David was in high school, he was a cross country runner. His father would run along with him and near the end of races, when David was exhausted and 20 feet behind the leader, his father would go into high gear. 

“You can take this guy!” Wellstone would yell with passion.

Franken did a perfect imitation of Wellstone. His arms waving, his head bobbing, his voice turning Wellstonian, Franken told the crowd, “We can take this guy!” As the early-morning crowd yelled its approval, Franken said, “I’m takin’ Norm Coleman.”

So how did the Coleman campaign get the NRSC to coordinate on this? Well, actual coordination would be illegal but what they can do is to contribute to NRSC’s “tracker dump” site. Video sent here is essentially like asking the NRSC to do an ad about the content being uploaded. Here’s three clips that were uploaded to the NRSC:

 
Those clips of Franken imitating Wellstone captured by trackers in Minnesota were then used in NRSC anti-Franken ads.

I understand in this race that using Franken’s comments out of context is par for the course for the right-wing but I’m starting wonder how much intent there is to use all these Wellstone references in their attacks.

We already know that Coleman didn’t really understand the financial crisis and has come off as a talking-point robot, but there’s a reason for that: