The last post

Posted at 6:25 AM on November 8, 2006 by Bob Collins (17 Comments)

This may be the last post of my political season on Polinaut. I've enjoyed it very much, but I'm glad the campaign is over. I hope folks who won don't immediately adopt the insipid "it's payback time," and I hope those who lost work harder now to work together without giving away the store. Unfortunately, there's another election in two years and that campaign began tonight.

Before I leave, I just want to say -- and I get very few opportunities to say this -- ... I told you so.
There's that's it. The guy who bought Eastern Airlines and then Yahoo at $400 finally called one.

(Original)

This race, however, seems to shape up as a great battle because both candidates are very bright, very well organized, and the electorate seems very unpredictable. Couple that with the apparent wonkiness of both candidates. They seem to eschew the babble in favor of policy analysis.

There might be a tendency to dismiss this race because it is Woodbury, afterall. But I think this is a race that won't be a typical Republican vs. Democrat battle. Both of the candidates, you see, are teachers. And one issue that has always transcended political boundaries in Woodbury, is education; especially secondary education. That's not to say both candidates can't slug it out on the other traditional party-line issues; they can.

Sen. Brian LeClair, one of the most conservative Republicans in the state Senate, also got knocked off. Rep. Mike Charron, a former Woodbury City Council member, got knocked off by Julie Bunn of Lake Elmo. Honestly, I thought he was safe.

But that's a big honkin' swath of blue across District 56.

As I said before, the Swails campaign was the most impressive organization I saw anywhere this season -- for a legislative candidate. And the DFL didn't target Klinzing because it didn't think Swails could win. But it was the education issue that did it. Just look at how Woodbury votes at school levies.

Here's a theory I have, though on why it's turned blue. There was a time when Woodbury was just houses the size of aircraft carriers. But in the last four years, they've built a ton of townhomes and apartments. Could it be that it led more DFLers to move in? Or is Woodbury just more pragmatic? Swails is not fire-breathing inner-city liberal DFLer. She's an actual moderate who , I think, actually believes in bipartisanship.

There was that group at the capital (many of whom are now unemployed) that tried to buck the party leaderships during the government shutdown and 'get real.' I think the group of freshmen going to the Capitol aren't going to be backbenchers giving honor and all power to the leadership, though it may be painful for both to learn that.

I haven't seen Woodbury's vote in the 6th District race. If that went to Wetterling too -- and Swails tied herself pretty closely to Wetterling -- then that's just, well, unbelievable to me. In terms of the entire Washington County, Michele Bachmann won by about 100 votes. The county is pretty much irrelevant now in the 6th District. When redistricting pulled in the area up to St. Cloud, Stearns County became the player.

OK, that's it. The next political voice(s) you hear will be Mike Mulcahy and Tom Scheck. Next week a small cadre here will begin plotting out substantial new initiatives for Campaign 2008.

Fade to black.

Comments (17)

Thanks for your work on the site – it was enjoyable and informative!

Posted by D | November 8, 2006 7:29 AM

Ya done good, Bob. And you called it right. Turns out we held our breath until we turned blue. And now the real work begins . . .

Thanks.

Posted by Barbara | November 8, 2006 8:44 AM

Bob: Your great work on Polinaut made it a must-read on my short list of political RSS feeds during the campaigns. Thanks for stepping into a role that you didn't always seem to want, but that you always did well indeed, with fairness and insight. It was great to meet you at Policy and a Pint.

Posted by Matt Abe | November 8, 2006 9:31 AM

Bob--
If I told you what I thought of your work here on the 6th district race, you would delete it. I know that because you have deleted my comments, many of them, over the past two months--not because they contained obscene language or personal abuse, but because they were critical of Polinaut coverage of the 6th district race.

You and Tom never seemed to recognize that politics is more than the "horserace" coverage you favor here. You seemed to assume--entirely incorrectly--that a person who disagreed with you was a victim of partisan fervor. And some of things that you said here about "the essential unimportance of politics" were truly incredible, given the current state of the nation and the world.

Despite the fact that you deleted my posts and resisted the factual information I presented you with, I kept on posting here in the hope of reaching other readers and opening your eyes to the real nature of this candidacy.

I believed that you and MPR would be interested in the exposure of an extremist and hatemonger posing as a mainstream candidate. I was wrong.

Posted by Bill Prendergast | November 8, 2006 12:00 PM

Hey! My post went up on Polinaut!

Bob Collins has taken me off his pre-emptive strike list, now that the election is over!

Allow me to explain--when I began submitting comments to Bob that were critical of his coverage of the 6th district race and MPR's refusal to 'out' Bachmann as an extremist and liar--Polinaut began to delete my posts.

When I complained, Bob and MPR directed me to the Polinaut policy on deletion, which might have been written by Louis the XIV--it allows Polinaut to delete comments for any reason, at any time, on any grounds (from a political discussion blog!)

Bob, Polinaut, MPR put my comments on "pre-emptive strike" mode--they would not be posted immediately, like other peoples' comments, until Bob had a chance to review them and decide if they contained too much criticism of Bob. Despite Polinaut censorship of Polinaut criticism, I didn't want to give up my access to this blog, because some very bright people read this and there is, undoubtedly, a lot of good information here.

So I continued to post comments about the election, avoiding mentioning Bob and Polinaut as much as possible, and I found that Bob and Polinaut would "un-ban" my comments a few hours after they were submitted.

And now apparently I'm off Bob's "pre-emptive strike" list! FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST!

And I hope you folks enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes at how things really work in the "political discourse" governed by MPR.

Posted by Bill Prendergast | November 8, 2006 12:15 PM

Overall I would give Polinaut a mixed grade, perhaps slightly better than average.

While the content of this blog was fantastic and had me checking back every day, I was unhappy with the general tone of the blogger. In a year when MN politics followed the rest of the nation into the mud, I had hoped that MPR would rise above it all. I did not appreciate the cynical, sarcastic tone. If I had wanted that, there are plenty of other places to go.

Posted by Bob Cudahy | November 8, 2006 1:17 PM

All of our comments have to approved before they appear, unless I'm on the sh-t list too...

Posted by rew | November 8, 2006 2:08 PM

Bob-

I want you to know how much I really enjoyed this blog. I thought it was informative and thought provoking. I read it almost every day. Thanks for all your hard work!

Posted by Jimmy Z | November 8, 2006 2:20 PM

Happy trails, Bob. Here's hoping the itch to communicate drives you back into some public/blogging venue before the next election.

You were certainly a more interesting and intellectually challenging contrarian than that Ken Lee fellow over at MPR's 'other' political blog.

--
David Wintheiser

Posted by David Wintheiser | November 8, 2006 2:51 PM

*In confusion, looks at the distant figure walking away*

"What!?"

*leans and squints into the setting sun*

"Bob! Come back Bob!"

*figure keeps walking away*

"Come back Bob, come back!"

Posted by gml4 | November 9, 2006 12:15 AM

To Bob Cudahy; This is true that there are many other places to go to read political blogs. However, even with the "Sarcastic Tone" you still read it everyday. I fail to understand your logic.

Posted by Anon | November 9, 2006 8:58 AM

Bob, Tom & Mike, thanks for your contributions to this blog. As whats-his-name says, see you on the radio.

Posted by bsimon | November 9, 2006 9:23 AM

My logic was that, while the content was fantastic enough to make it worth checking out every day, I often had to grit my teeth while wading through the snottiness and unnecessary combativeness. Content grade A+. Attitude grade C-.

Posted by Bob Cudahy | November 9, 2006 1:14 PM

Thanks for your comments all. Bottom line: some people like me. Some people don't. That's what choice is all about. There is no right or wrong. Everyone makes the best choices for their own tastes. It's like a restaurant and the blogs are a big menu. "Don't order the Bob."

Posted by Bob Collins | November 9, 2006 1:17 PM

Bob, we all like you, it's just that we didn't all appreciate your tone at times. Passions ran high this year for cause, and it's never good to dismiss the passionate.

You were never even one-tenth as opinionated as I am, but since I never stop being opinionated it's hard to read my blog without knowing where I'm coming from.

Snark is only meaningful when the reader knows where you are coming from. I think you needed more time to establish who you were, and maybe it would have been better to have done that in an off-off year.

Had MPR had a menu and had "Bob" been in the breakfast section with the cereals, maybe we would have enjoyed your Dale Connelly-Jim Ed Poole humor more than we did. But right and wrong are very real, non-subjective things. Not everyone is the best judge of what's best for them. And you can't write a political blog without pissing people off so learn to live with the criticism.

You're a great communicator, your other blog is just swell, but you need to find a deeper appreciation for politics and politically active people if you want to write about politics and the things that are important to political activists.

And please bump this comment up because you certainly deserve the last word in this thread.

Posted by Mark Gisleson | November 9, 2006 1:37 PM

No need to bump it up.

Here's the thing, Mark. Blogs are not news sites and never should they be used for that purpose. Granted, I know they are. But they shouldn't be.

That said, it's about writing. Writing shouldn't be for the marketplace. Writing should be about writing and the marketplace can decide whether it's worth reading or not.

I've been covering politics for 30 years and if you check the time stamps on Polinaut's postings, you'll find they were overnights, early mornings, late nights, weekends, weekdays. So developing an "apprection" for politics and politically active people isn't really important to me because you don't do what I've done and not have it.

That said, I'll admit "my" appreciation isn't "your" appreciation and whatever "tension" folks may detect reflects THAT. A difference. You're wrong, in my opinion. There IS no right and wrong on this point and if there was one thing I just LOVE to make political activists angry about, it's popping a little balloon into their world which insists that how they view things is "right," and whatever they disagree with is, "wrong."

It would be stupid for me -- or anyone else -- to write something that is tailored to someone else's appreciation. That would be.... well... that would be McDonald's. And while they might serve a gazillion people, they serve crap, but that's how they make money and they dont' make anybody too mad.

Good for McDonald's.

Politics, however, is for dissecting and turning it this way... that way...upside down.

Politicians don't like that because they've turned politics into a fraudulent world of acting and theater.

Me? I'm the critic. And, yes, that sort of stuff might make people angry. Sometimes it makes them angry because of the way I say something. Sometimes it makes them angry for me saying it at all.

I kept the comments turned on so that we could discuss and debate. You could tell me I was full of (stuff) and I could tell you the same thing.

That's good, to my way of thinking.

But inevitably, a blog has to reflect the writer and that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea.
But in the end, it IS going to be a lot of people's cup of tea.

Whether you like the tea or don't like the tea, I'm not McDonald's. I'm brewing my tea. Sip, pass it along, water the bushes with it.

The reason I'm not looking for tips on how to write about things that are important to political activists is that I write about things that are important enough to me for me to write about it.

Polinaut went from nothing to THE most read page on the MPR site (not counting the Current playlist). That was no accident. That was folks choosing to click a link and read it because they wanted to.

That factoid, I'm sure, drives people crazy. That factoid, I'd guess, probably drives a few people in the newsroom crazy.

But Polinaut was never meant to be the blog version of suburbia...where everything looks the same and is built not to offend anybody...so that everywhere it went... regardless of where they came from... it felt like home.

I do not feel compelled -- and never have felt compelled -- to apologize for anything. But I do always feel compelled to explain things; whether it's what I think is behind politics and politicians -- and political activists -- or how newsrooms work or how politics work. In the vein, the Polinaut reader has been extended a respect so unusual , they don't even recognize it was extended. (g)

You got my honesty and you got my time. That should be enough.

Posted by Bob Collins | November 9, 2006 2:54 PM

Huzzah, Mr. Bob. You are spot on, as the phrase du jour goes.

You blog, I blog, we all blog. And woe to the blogger who caves to the masses. We have the MSM engaged in that activity.

The blogs have become one of the few sources of unvarnished truth. Not necessarily The Truth, but truth of the writer. In the final analysis, that's what matters most, and the blogs will be with us until the end of time. Or until the next hot thing comes along.

I want to echo sentiment(s) expressed above that encourage you to create a venue for your blog spirit sooner than later. I hope you will. Not sure how we'll find you, but good news travels fast, especially in the blogosphere.

Best to you.

Posted by Barbara | November 10, 2006 9:40 AM

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