Category: US Politics

by Dave Mindeman

Stuart Rothenberg is one of the most respected political analysts in the country and today he released his new House analysis and he upgraded his estimate of Democratic gains from 8 to 12 seats to a new total of 15-20.... a Democratic majority.

He claims that the burden is no longer on the Democrats to create upsets in certain races, no, the onus is on the GOP to try to salvage a handful of their own seats in order to keep their majority.

Rothenberg sites the continued poor performance ratings for Bush, the low public marks for Congress, and the continued escalation in the "wrong direction" numbers.... as well as stronger fundraising coming out of the DCCC.

Cross your fingers.....

Category: Minnesota Politics

by Dave Mindeman

We have a weekly paper that gets distributed to area households called the Sun Current. (Published by Sun Newspapers -- they have several weeklies in the Metro area) Last week they issued an editorial lamenting the volume of "attack" letters being sent to the paper. They specifically talked about the 2nd Congressional district campaign, but this phenomenon certainly isn't isolated to one geographic area.

Generally speaking, the public discourse has gotten pretty disgusting in the past few years. Is it worse than in the past? Well, that can be debated both ways. Bottom line -- it's still pretty disturbing.

What causes it? That's another question that has many possible answers... but in politics, as in just about everything else, the public takes its cues from media. I find it curious that the Sun Current would set about "scolding" the public for their lack of decorum yet offered no comment about the leaflets distributed by the Kline for Congress campaign -- 2 of the nastiest flyers I've seen in a long time. Nasty ads produce nasty responses. The new political axiom is never let a negative go unanswered and the rebuttal may be nastier than the original.

Now media certainly can't censor what the campaigns offer, but they can put some factual standards in place that can at least hold them to a standard of accuracy or relevance. If the media defines those standards in advance and holds them accountable, then they can force some changes.

Another factor that has played into this "culture of negativity" comes from the "new media", the blogs. Some mainstream reporters have gotten lazy by simply reporting on what the blogs talk about -- and blogs do talk. You don't see much "fluff" in the blogs -- the competition to "dig up the dirt" is pretty relentless. One blogger, Minnesota Democrats Exposed by Michael Brodkorb, relentlessly goes through public records and publishes anything remotely looking like impropriety. Some of it sticks -- most of it is garbage. The media praises his exploits and he proudly pontificates about the politicians he has "brought down". There are liberal blogs that try to counter these "attack dogs" with attacks of their own -- the ugliness is the only thing bipartisan in the political world these days.

Is it any wonder that politicians are held in such low regard by the public? And is it any wonder that the volume of negative letters to the editor keeps increasing? What is going to stop it? Nothing that comes to mind. Charges and countercharges are the norm now -- you have to wonder why anyone would even want to get into politics anymore; more and more good people are walking away from the sewer and the public suffers for it.

Yes, the Sun Current can scold the readers about the nastiness of their discourse, but I would suggest they do a little self-examination about who is really at fault -- is it the public? or is it the decisions by media as to how they narrate the themes of the campaigns themselves? When the media starts to draw some kind of line that says enough -- so will the public.

Note: This post was edited ... I had assumed that the Sun Current may have been the vehicle for distribution of the Kline flyer that attacked the Rowley campaign and had questioned the editorial in that context; but the Sun Current's direct involvement is not clear at this time. The point still can be made that the Sun Current questions the discourse from its readers, yet makes no judgments regarding campaign distributed material. We are checking into how the Kline material is getting to the public.

Category: Society

by Dave Mindeman

In the wake of the foiled British terror plot, there has been a lot of talk about what type of tactics British intelligence has that we don't have. Some of the talk centers on profiling.

Profiling, in and of itself, is a valuable tool. But let's be clear... there is a difference between criminal profiling and racial profiling. If a crime is committed and an eyewitness describes the suspect as a black male -- then law enforcement is certainly going to be on the lookout for a black male fitting the description given.

On the other hand, if a crime is committed in a predominantly white neighborhood and there is no eyewitness account -- but the police stop every black man they see because it is suspicious for them to be in that neighborhood, then the police are clearly wrong.

Now, in regards to terrorism, there certainly will be a very strong possibility that a terrorist act will be committed by a member of a radical Muslim sect. That does not mean that when a bomb explodes that we immediately round up every Arab-American Muslim we can find. That is flat out ridiculous. And as we found out in the Oklahoma bombing, it can lead us far away from the real perpetrators.

What the British do is search the Muslim community for the groups or mosques that promote the extremist form of Islam. But they don't just arrest people for words -- no, they use specific surveilance and infiltration to see if those words translate into violent plans or actions. It is the human intelligence, the in person observation, that make it work.

It is still a very fine line to walk. Speaking words of hate is not an illegal act. Anger is not a crime. But it is a symptom of potential danger and can prompt furthur investigation.

Profiling Muslims is completely wrong and completely useless. The Muslim religion transcends racial or ethnic lines. And there are no physical characteristics that distinguish Muslims of peace from the radical terrorists. And extending that profile to Arab-Americans is also very dangerous. Although the potential exposure to radicalism is inherently higher in the Arab-American community simply because they have traditional connections along familial and religious lines, that exposure is certainly not worthy of extra suspicion by itself.

Conservatives tend to think that racial profiling is a necessary tool against terrorism and the reason it is not used is because liberals insist on "political correctness". But, again, it is not profiling that is wrong... it is racial or ethnic profiling without corroborating evidence that is not only wrong but a waste of valuable time.

When a criminal act occurs, there is a very narrow window of opportunity to catch the perpetrator before he or she can cover their tracks to escape. If racial profiling is your first method of defining suspects, you lose that window.

Using racial profilining just doesn't work.