Bad News Gets Worse

Team Franken got a dose of bad news as the new week starts.

Just a few months ago, Al Franken had plenty of reasons to smile about his chances of unseating Minnesota’s Republican Sen. Norm Coleman .

Minnesotans oppose the war — and the president — that Coleman supported. Franken was doing his homework: he had entered the race early and was running a strong grass-roots campaign focused on local organizing and smaller-venue events.

And, in early June, he secured the DFL nomination at the state convention on the first ballot.

But costly mistakes in the campaign of former Saturday Night Live writer are now imperiling his chances of winning.

Poll trends in the past several weeks indicate that Coleman has increased his lead over Franken. Although the numbers have fluctuated, four of the last five polls show Coleman ahead of Franken - three by more than nine points. So now, CQ Politics is changing the rating on the race to Leans Republican from No Clear Favorite.

Part of the reason for change is that the reasonable voters of Minnesota are starting to see the candidate for who he really is. No small amount of credit for this goes to Michael Brodkorb - he has done a yeoman's work on exposing the candidate for the petty, mean individual that he is. However, there are a few Democrats who are coming to the realization that Team Franken is not the brightest bulb (or bulbs) in the bunch.

I’ve always felt that it’s hypocritical to only criticize candidates you oppose for positions that appall you while turning a blind eye to the missteps of those candidates you support.

That brings me to a current TV commercial for the DFL-endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate, Al Franken. Let me preface this by saying that although I am not committed in this race, my politics are much closer to Franken’s than they are to those of his opponent, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.

Franken’s 30-second spot points out that the U.S. has built hundreds of schools, more than a thousand roads and thousands of sewer and water projects in Iraq. He goes on to say that instead, we should spend that money on education, health care, jobs and infrastructure in the U.S. He closes with, “We need to invest in America again” (emphasis his).

That’s what I call pandering. It verges on xenophobia-this statement more than implies that the choice is between spending money on Iraqi infrastructure or American needs. It is Us versus Them-they are the Other, we are Americans. This sort of message seems designed to appeal to Minnesotans who are bitter about the financial costs of the war and/or foreign aid in general. It says that once we stop spending money on them, we’ll have more for us.

The writer then goes on to tell about her interaction with Team Franken about this ad and the exercise did not leave the author with warm fuzzies.....to put it nicely.

When Team Franken starts loosing leaners like the author above, you know things are not going well. When things are not going as well as planned, it leads to desperation measures like we are seeing in the latest round of Franken ads. His latest round of ads claim that he was always against the war (unlike his opponent) but it has been widely reported that it was not always the case.

It is clear that the DFL's gamble on Franken is not paying off as well as they had hoped. They went with the comedien because of the name recognition. What the DFL failed to recognize is that name recognition and the ability to raise money outside of the state are not good reasons to nominate a candidate. The candidate has to have ideas and ideals that he can and will stick by. Al Franken was never that man and now the DFL has no other option. It seems that they have given up on regaining the "Wellstone seat".