Update on Happy Hour

Only a couple of days after the original WCCO report there was a Facebook group called "Dear Minneapolis City Council, there is no need for you to ban Happy Hour." As of this writing that group has 2,180 members, one of which is Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. This was posted by Mayor Rybak yesterday on Facebook:

"Just to be clear, I don't know of anyone around City Hall who is even thinking about this. It was a suggestion from a citizen committee but I don't think it has much support. I certainly don't think that's where we should be spending our time. Now people can stop emailing and Facebooking me about it...and I'll get back to the budget where our focus belongs."

That pretty much puts a nail in it as there are other sources within City Hall who echo the Mayors sentiment.

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Or not.

Since we're talking about posts on Facebook perhaps I should share a comment posted to my wall:

"Tony, I disagree with your stance in the Happy Hour ban. If it takes effect bars will need to start offering everyday low prices! Not just for an hour or two. Take a second to think this over."

I did. This was my response:

"While you make a good point I don't know that it's entirely accurate. Yes there would be downward pressure on prices in general, but the reason for happy hour in the first place is to create business during non-peak times. Happy hour is, in essence, a supply and demand pricing scheme. When demand is high, so are prices and when demand is low the prices are too. Without this ability to alter prices to bring in business many bars would suffer and eventually close down, thus reducing the supply of bars and increasing the demand for their services thereby causing prices to increase in turn."

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This is an example of why the internet is an amazing thing that we probably take too much for granted. Go internets!

The happiest hour of the day no longer?

The Minneapolis City council is considering a ban on drink specials, including happy hour, in an effort to reduce binge drinking. Also being considered is a limit of one drink per person at a time and a ban on drinking games.

I went looking for information on the City Council's web site and came across a link to a site advertising the best happy hours in the city; it says "Minneapolis Happy Hours". Sort of ironic and it gets to the heart of the problem, everyone likes happy hour. The bar owners need it, the bar patrons love it, about the only people who are against it are public health experts, but I've got to suspect that even some of them enjoy a happy hour from time to time. There is a reason it's called happy hour after all. Cheap booze makes people happy.

This comes after the University of Minnesota decided that only the rich people can drink at their new football stadium and the Minnesota legislature decided that only out of town Republicans are responsible enough to stay out till 4 am drinking. The utter contempt for people of modest means just oozes out of all these proposals, the idea that poor people should have different rules than rich people.

The problem with this kind of solution is that it's a half measure; it is really only an impediment to poor students. Students who are financially better off will still be able to drink themselves silly and a rise in the number of house parties, which is a worse environment than the bar for binge drinking, would likely follow. It seems to me that if the real issue is binge drinking among college students and you're going to target bars there is a much simpler solution, ban the sale of alcohol on campus, including at the new football stadium.

Leave the rest of us our happy hour, we deserve it.

What is Norm Coleman's ultimate goal?

Every new day of the Senate election contest brings a new theory about what Norm Coleman's intentions really are. Is he just stalling to withhold the Democrats 59th seat? Does he want another election? Is the whole thing a PR move by the GOP to create a new galvanizing figure for fundraising? Does Norm even care? All of these theories have one thing in common, they're theories. All of the objective evidence suggests that Norm Coleman is waging this election contest because he desperately wants to keep his Senate seat and this is the only way he can do that.

A lot of people have been reading ulterior motives into the Coleman legal teams bungling of this case; as if the last eight years of Republican incompetence is not enough to convince people that maybe they're bungling the case because they're simply incompetent. When the inevitability of a recount became apparent the Franken campaign brought in some of the best legal minds in the country. The Coleman team tried to do it on the cheap by using some local guys. Their paying for that mistake now of course, but I'm sure at the time it was seen as a cost saving measure, they were going to win after all, why waste money on the recount.

There is some aspect of all these theories that may be true, but none of them on their own explains why Norm Coleman would sacrifice his future political career, he would only do that for Norm Coleman. All of these other motivations; Republicans wanting to keep Franken unseated as long as possible, the NRSC wanting to create the next direct mailing poster boy, Norm's day job, they all contribute to the higher purpose of Norm Coleman keeping his Senate seat.

I don't think Norm is throwing the election contest, I think his lawyers have been incompetent. I don't think the election contest is being driven by John Cornyn, but Norn will certainly take his contributions. I don't think the whole point of the election contest is to delay seating Al Franken, that's just one of the upsides for the GOP.

In any of these types of analysis it's important to keep in mind the principle of Occam's razor, which basically means don't assume things. Norm Coleman is in court, fighting the outcome of the election because Norm Coleman wants to be a United States Senator because without that he doesn't really have much.

Yet another example of the Coleman-Strib alliance

The headline reads "Norm Coleman reaches out to Franken on absentee ballots." The reality is that Coleman's legal team sent a letter to Al Franken, and the press, that asks him not to fight their attempt to have all of the rejected absentee ballots re-re-inspected. Which is, of course, in direct opposition to the position they took prior to the election contest being filed.

This headline would have been appropriate if, back in November, Coleman had decided to go along with counting wrongly rejected absentee ballots. But the Coleman team didn't do that did they? No, they refused to even consider the possibility of counting such ballots. It's understandable why the Coleman position has changed so dramatically, they don't have a choice. They need to find votes somewhere.

But for the Star Tribune to cast this effort as reaching out is nothing more than misinformation.

On January 21st they ran an article under the headline "Franken ratchets up legal fight." The article was about that day's hearing over Franken's motion to dismiss. The filing of a motion to dismiss is a default procedural move and is certainly not a case of "ratcheting" anything up. Coleman filing the election contest in the first place was a "ratcheting" up, a motion to dismiss is like checking on the big blind with 7, deuce off. The vast majority of the time nothing will come of it, but it doesn't cost you anything and hey, every once in awhile you can flop a boat. If the poker reference didn't make sense the point is that a motion to dismiss is trivial. It's a standard move.

This is all part of a larger PR push by the Coleman campaign and sympathetic media outlets like the Strib and the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Since the reality of a recount became clear the day after the election they've been building this story up, slowly at first, then as things started to go Franken's way the shrillness and lies came faster and from more directions.

With Norm Coleman seemingly resigned to his fate, having taken a job with a lobbying firm of all things, the question becomes how far does this get pushed? Will they appeal it all the way to the US Supreme Court, assuming it doesn't go their way? The more that Norm Coleman becomes detached from the process, the more it seems like the motivation for the effort is not his but that of the GOP leadership.

They are more relevant while the Democrats are short that one vote which will be critical for the issue they plan on making the biggest stand against, the Employee Free Choice Act. They fear Franken getting seated because there is at least one moderate Republican, Arlen Specter, who seems likely to support the bill. Specter plus Franken plus all the other Dems equals sixty votes for cloture. Another theory is that they are trying to build Franken up as a lightning rod for GOP electoral angst. Either way it now seems unlikely they will give up until they've exhausted all of their legal options.

The trial phase of the election contest begins tomorrow as the never ending Senate race enters yet another stage.

Would a run-off be a better way?

Reforming our election system is already getting attention from the legislature and one of the ideas being pushed by members of both parties is a run-off in cases of a close result. From one of the supporters herself, Sen. Ann Rest of New Hope:

"It would be $3 or $4 million instead of $250,000, which is the cost of the current recount. But I think voters would believe that is a worthwhile expenditure to have a clear result in an extraordinary circumstance."

In other words because the recount had a few glitches we should spend anywhere from 12 to 16 times the amount of money. And what happens if the runoff is really close? Do you have a recount of the runoff?

The other question to ask is would Minnesotans even want to go back to vote again for a single race? In Georgia this year there was a huge drop-off between turnout on Election Day and turnout in the Senate runoff. This means the people who ultimately decide the race will be a different group from the people who decided all the other races.

Another runoff supporter Laura Brod had this to say:

"The voters are the ones that are looking at it, saying it's a confusing process, I don't understand why these votes were counted and these votes were not. I don't understand how a recount total can be used in one place and not in another. I think a runoff vote -- not an instant runoff vote, but a runoff vote -- would create clarity. I think it would lessen confusion in the system, and I think it's something we should very closely look at."

I don't see how a runoff creates any clarity; there is the very real possibility that the person who wins the runoff is not the person who won on election night. I don't think that's clarity and I'm not so sure that clarity is something we should aspire to. Transparency, yes. The issues she brings up are clear though, not confusing. The issue of the missing ballots in Minneapolis is unfortunate, but to then say that those votes shouldn't count is ridiculous. This is a human system so mistakes will happen and ballots will be lost and it's not the voters who should be punished because of it. Just because some people are allowing themselves to be confused doesn't mean the process is confusing.

A runoff election is a solution to something that isn't a problem, a close election. A close election will expose problems in any voting system, but that doesn't mean that the closeness of the election is the problem, the problems are the problem. The number of rejected absentee ballots are a problem. The lost ballots are a problem. The ballots that were found while looking for the lost ballots are a problem. There were certainly problems with the election and the recount, but they are all problems that can for the most part be addressed with tweaks and changes to Minnesota's existing election law.

Rejected absentee ballots are being counted

You can watch the action live on The Uptake. Meanwhile Nate Silver is up with an analysis of the 953 rejected absentee ballots that will be counted; he's predicting that Franken will net 31 votes, extending his lead to 80. He throws cold water on the idea that Coleman has excluded many more ballots than Franken from the counting.

The apparent edge for Franken comes as each campaign has had essentially a unilateral veto to prevent any particular absentee ballot from being opened and counted. Initially, based on a review of the process in Democratic stronghold St. Louis county, it appeared that the Coleman campaign was being far more aggressive than the Franken campaign in exercising its veto. Information gathered by additional counties by the Star Tribune, however, suggests that this may not be the case, and that the Franken campaign has been at least as aggressive as Coleman in exercising its veto.

Also the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the Coleman campaigns request to put a halt to the whole thing in order for them to change the rules to their liking. Lots of action going on today.

New Vikings Stadium? Ha!

In a display of what can only be described as monumental balls and extreme tone deafness, the Vikings are asking for a new stadium. No really, I'm serious. The idea is for a new, almost billion dollar stadium, with more than 60% of the funding being provided by tax payers. Lester Bagley, vice president in charge of taxpayer fleecing stadium development tried his best to sell the project:

"Why not, the Vikings are a public asset. This is going to create an economic boost."

Why not? Why not? Seriously dude, why not?

Larry Pogemiller:

"It certainly will not be a high priority. We have a fiscal and job crisis in Minnesota."

Margaret Anderson Kelliher:

"There is no chance. It's a great idea if they would pay for it themselves. But we are in uncharted economic waters. We are in a crisis situation, and we have to focus on the financial and economic health of the state."

Governor Pawlenty also seemed to laugh off the idea. The very thought that this would happen this year is ridiculous and why the Vikings would even bother to bring it up I don't know, but it gave me a good laugh.

2006 to 2008, Part 2: the Senate race

Even though the winner is still up in the air, I think we have enough information to begin breaking down what happened and why.

When looking to make comparisons I think it is more appropriate to compare this year's Senate race to the 2006 Governor's race than to the 2006 Senate race. The dynamics between the 2008 Senate and 2006 Governors race are similar while the dynamics of the two Senate races are quite different. First of all the 2006 Senate race was for an open seat previously held by the DFL and the race featured a successful, dynamic and generally well liked woman against a generic GOP white male. In both the 2006 Governor's race and the 2008 Senate race we had a GOP incumbent running against a white male DLFer.

Let's take a quick look at the numbers from the two elections

2006

Pawlenty(R-inc) 47%

Hatch(D) 46%

Hutchinson(I) 6%

2008

Coleman(R-inc) 41%

Franken(D) 41%

Barkley(I) 15%

Obviously the biggest difference in the numbers is the amount of support received by the IP candidate. The few polls that tried to measure who Barkley was drawing votes from seemed to indicate that he was drawing about equally from both candidates, maybe slightly more from Coleman than Franken but look at this pollster graph:

Almost from the moment the election started Franken was losing support. Coleman, on the other hand, was doing okay until two things happened that began to bring his numbers down, Dean Barkley entered the race and the economy went south. In fact Barkley's peak conforms almost exactly to Coleman's low point. You can see that some of these people went back to Coleman before the election, as the ramifications of the bailout began to sink in and anger subsided a little, but the damage was done.

How many of these Barkley voters could have been persuaded to the DFL? Probably not many, too many people were turned off by both Coleman and Franken. A poll conducted by SurveyUSA on December 4th showed that if the election were held again people would pretty much vote the same way, meaning even though Barkley voters knew how close the race was and how much their vote really mattered they would still cast it for Barkley. The Senate race was a really nasty campaign so it's no surprise that many people still feel unable to vote for either major party candidate.

Another of the similarities between 2006 and 2008 to consider is that the DFL was somewhat divided on who to nominate. In both cases some progressives were disappointed in the DFLs choice and this disappointment carried through the entire election. I went door-knocking with more than a few people who were still not sold on Franken, even though they were passing out his literature. I heard similar sentiments in 2006 about Hatch. I felt the same way about John Kerry in 2004. It's difficult to overcome your chosen candidate's loss when you suffer from rabid True Believerism.

How do you bring a party back together after a closely contested primary? That was the question on everyone's mind even before we knew who got the Democratic Presidential nomination but in the end it didn't matter, that race was a blowout. The emergence of groups like PUMA goes to show that some portion of the activists will have a hard time getting behind the nominee, even when it's a once in a generation caliber candidate. There are a lot of activists that lie somewhere in the middle though and these people need to be given a reason to support a candidate, not just party unity, and that reason needs to come from the candidate.

How much of an effect this had in the end is hard to know, but in a race this close, that everyone knew would be close, any little thing can be huge. During a Presidential cycle when enthusiasm on our side was sky high, Franken wasn't able to generate any more enthusiasm than Coleman. In the closing days of the campaign the best reason the Franken campaign could give people to vote for their candidate was that he could provide Barack Obama with the Senate majority he will need to pass key legislation. How this became the campaigns closing argument I'll never understand, but it seems to me that a closing argument should explain why a candidate could best serve the people voting for them. The best the Franken campaign could come up with for this was that he'll vote with Obama.

I don't think it can be overstated how weak this argument is on its own, much less as a closing argument. During a campaign when Al Franken criticized Norm Coleman incessantly for voting lockstep with President Bush, the reason he gave people to vote for him was that he would vote in lockstep with President Obama. Among the many messaging mistakes of the Franken campaign this was the largest.

The thing is this; both Norm Coleman and Tim Pawlenty are smart politicians. They both ran with the advantages of incumbency and are very popular within the GOP base. That said the DFL had a shot in both races and a good one, even with a somewhat fractured base. You put a candidate like Amy Klobuchar in an open seat race with the party united behind her and it's no contest. The DFL has a structural advantage in the state and if the 2008 Senate race and 2006 Governors race can teach us anything, it's that we need to make an even bigger effort to consolidate our base in the future.

If there is one thing the Obama campaign can teach us at the state level it's that we should not be afraid of all the ways that the opposition can attack a candidate or that candidates perceived inability to win. We should instead focus on who we want to represent us and who can bring the party together behind them rather than trying to drag the party along with them. A really well run campaign helps too.

What is wrong with this picture?

Here's the link.

Coleman campaign continues stall tactics

Today in Anoka and St. Louis counties the Coleman campaign continued to try and stop the sorting of rejected absentee ballots, demanding that some properly rejected ballots also be included. In St. Louis county election officials identified 161 wrongly rejected ballots and the Coleman campaign requested that an additional 22 ballots also be included. Similarly in Anoka county election officials have identified 42 absentee ballots that were improperly rejected and the Coleman campaign refused to consider those ballots unless an additional 5 properly rejected ballots were included.

On a statewide level the Coleman campaign is requesting 654 properly rejected ballots, mostly from strong Coleman counties, be considered in addition to the 1,346 improperly rejected ballots that the county election officials have deemed were rejected in error. I don't know if it was on purpose or not but adding those two numbers together is 2,000 which must be some sort of magical nexus of absentee ballots that results in Coleman netting more than 50 votes.

That was the other thing that happened today, the Canvassing board met to clean up some bookkeeping and that resulted in Franken gaining four more votes. So now the lead is at 50 votes. Out of 2.9 million. Amazing.

Klobuchar: Senate should seat Franken

Okay, she didn't say that exactly.

"If the Canvassing Board declares a winner, that should be our senator," she said, even if a court challenge were to follow. "[The Senate] could seat a senator pending the litigation."

Of course expectations are that Franken will be the one eventually certified by the Canvassing board following the counting of the rejected absentee ballots. There is precedent for this course of action, after the 1996 Louisiana Senate race the Republican controlled Senate seated the Democratic winner, Mary Landrieu, while they investigated claims by Woody Jenkins of widespread fraud, eventually they confirmed Landrieu's election.

This Friday is the deadline for election officials to submit improperly rejected absentee ballots to the Secretary of State and if everything goes as scheduled, by Monday the 5th we should know more about the nature of those votes.

2006 to 2008, Part 1: the House races

With the year ending and year end reviews pilling up I figure it's time to look at the aftermath of this years house races and see how things look going forward.

The races in the eight Minnesota congressional districts from the last two years can be roughly divided into 4 categories;

1 - Incumbents holding steady or strengthening their position: congressional districts 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8 in 2008, congressional districts 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 in 2006.

2 - Open seats - CD3 in 2008, CD5 and CD6 in 2006.

3 - That rare instance when an incumbent loses a reelection bid which happened in CD1 in 2006.

4 - Michelle Bachmann's district.

Leading up to November 4th there was some deal of expectation that one of Minnesota's traditionally red congressional districts, 3 or 6, would turn blue. In both instances the Republicans held their ground, but there is reason for optimism about our future chances.

First of all, every Democratic incumbent increased on their top line number from 2006 except for Betty McCollum, who declined from 70% to 69%. These are five safe seats for as long as the people sitting in them want to run. In CD2 Kline held steady at 57% which is essentially what he's done the last two years. This is also a safe seat, but the good news is that if and when Kline moves on the DFL should have a decent shot at it. If Sarvi, for example, had run against a generic Republican rather than a three-term incumbent, he could have made a race out of it.

CD3 was disappointing for a lot of DFL activists and that Media lost by a nearly double digit margin didn't help. Eric Paulson didn't hit 50%, he got 49%, but he was facing a well funded opponent and a third party candidate who took 10%. This is a Republican leaning district and although Paulson will likely face a strong challenge in 2010 unless he drinks the same bat-shit crazy juice as Bachmann, he should be favored to win reelection.

This brings us to CD6, home of Michelle Bachmann. There have been many electrons used trying to explain how it was that Michelle Bachmann won reelection even though she seemed to be trying to sabotage her own campaign. Look at the results as compared to 2006.

2008
Bachmann(R-inc) 46%
Tinklenberg(D) 43%
Anderson (I) 10%

2006
Bachmann(R) 50%
Wetterling(D) 42%
Binkowski (I) 7%

It was close in 2008 only because Bachmann made it close, but I think the right candidate could cause Bachmann trouble. She lost 4 points from 2006 to 2008 but the IP listed candidate picked up 3 points. Bachmann may have put the election into play, but Tinklenberg was unable convince a conservative district that he was an acceptable alternative. There were other factors that played a part, including the IP candidate getting 10%, when Tink had the IP endorsement and Tink leaving $500,000 in the bank, but this election was in play for one reason only, Michelle Bachman. For that reason I think this is the DFL's best shot at a pickup in the short term, but that may be a short lived gain.

Redistricting looms and Minnesota faces the likely lose of a house seat, who's seat specifically will be a very contentious issue when the map is redrawn after 2010, but CD6 looks like the easiest one to divide up seeing that it boarders all of the other CDs except CD1. Given that it might make more sense for the DFL to focus on CD3 again in 2010, rather than CD6.

White Elephant

At one of my family gatherings this year we had a White Elephant gift exchange. My contribution was "A New Dawn for America: John McCain for President" the puzzle. Or, the worst campaign material ever produced by anyone, ever. Gaze upon its terribleness.

Words can't do justice to how badly designed this image is. It's even more ironic that it comes in puzzle form, as much of the McCain campaigns actions during the course of the campaign were nothing short of puzzling. But look at the image. It says a New Dawn for America across the top, but the background is twilight. There is a tree that rises out of the ground, but its branches are bear of leaves, or any sign of life at all. Then just sort of dropped on top is a picture of John McCain, staring ahead. It's a scary looking image.

And a hilarious White Elephant gift.

MDE reaches new levels of hyperbole

(From Minnesota Democrats Exposed, 12/24/08)

"2.9 Million Disenfranchised"

That's the headline of the post. Can you guess why 2.9 million will be disenfranchised? Come on, one guess?

The Supreme Court ruled today that 2.9 million voters in the state of Minnesota be left disenfranchised.

Whoever guessed the Minnesota Supreme Court wins a fruitcake. Seriously, anyone want a fruitcake?

Somehow the Minnesota Supreme Court turning down Norm Coleman's petition to delay certification until the duplicate ballot issue is resolved means that all 2.9 million Minnesota voters have been disenfranchised. This is very high level critical thinking we are dealing with. 133 = 2.9 million. I don't know the exact formula used to make that calculation, but I assure you it must be some advanced statistical algorithm that was specially developed to analyze this issue.

That or Ryan pulled it out of his ass.

Even if you accept the argument that double counting could have happened, and there's no evidence that it did, it doesn't mean 2.9 million voters were disenfranchised, it means up to 133 voters got twice the enfranchisement.

Duplicate ballots have become an issue in this recount, 

And why is it that duplicate ballots have become an issue? Was anyone talking about duplicate ballots two weeks ago? No. The only reason that there is an issue is because the Coleman campaign is desperately grasping at any chance to overturn what has become increasingly inevitable, Al Franken will be certified the winner of the election.

anyone who cast a vote in this election should be gravely concerned that their vote may not matter as much as someone else.

Gravely concerned? Really? What about all the people who properly cast absentee ballots that were subsequently rejected? Should they also be gravely concerned? What about all the dead DFLers who voted? They are already gravely concerned, should they be more concerned? What's this about dead DFLers voting?

Team Franken should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for the words in their statement that was released following the Supreme Court's ruling: "We win in Supreme Court."

So let me get this straight. Norm Coleman's campaign files a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court to halt the certification. The ruling by the Supreme Court, a unanimous ruling by the way, goes in Franken's favor. The Franken campaign responds by saying that the ruling was in their favor. What part of this is shameful?

Team Franken sees winning as turning a blind eye to 2.9 million rightful votes.  Al Franken has showed that he does not care about the integrity of the process, he cares only about a title in front of his name.

This is world class hyperbole. I have wonder if there is some specialized training one needs to create such an immense monument to over the top hyperbole. Truly a sight to behold.

This has only begun what will make this process longer unfortunately.

As long as you keep up the tremendous work Ryan, this process couldn't go on long enough.

Supreme Court rules against Coleman on double counting

In an opinion written by Justice Alan Page the Minnesota Supreme court ruled that any challenges of supposed double counted ballots would need to be resolved by a court hearing, where evidence can be presented and not by the canvassing board. In the short term it means that these ballots will be counted as normal and added to the totals. If Coleman wants to press this issue he will have to file an election challenge.

This came on the heels of an earlier ruling made by the Supremes allowing local election officials more time in submitting improperly rejected absentee ballots to the State Canvassing Board. Now the local officials will have until January 2nd to submit such ballots to the Secretary of State who will have until January 4th to open and count them. On January 5th the challenging of these ballots will begin and the Canvassing board could certify a winner as early as January 6th, although that may be wishful thinking.