A great many people are probably not even aware that in the Minnesota senate race that Al Franken even has an opponent for the DFL (as the Democratic Party in MN is called) nomination. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer has been running a true grassroots progressive campaign against the "inevitable" (sound familiar?) Al Franken. A big complaint made by JNP supporters has been the lack of media coverage by the local paper, the Minneapolis-based Star-Tribune. In Sunday's edition JNP is mentioned prominently not once, but twice.
In today's (Sunday, May 4th) newspaper Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is actually mentioned in TWO different sections of the paper. First, in the Opinion Exchange section Lori Sturdevant has a front-page column where she profiles the JNP campaign that invokes the memory of the late, great Paul Wellstone (and at the very end, Depression-era governor Floyd B. Olson). In the Metro section, there is a front page article about the DFL senate race that ACTUALLY talks about JNP and his campaign with MORE than the typical sentence at the end that says something to the effect "Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is also seeking the DFL endorsement".
It's nice that JNP is finally getting some notice and that there is at least SOME acknowledgement that maybe Al Franken isn't so "inevitable" after all. I only wish that this acknowledgement happend NOT as a result of Franken's tax troubles (which is more a function of the Republican "slime machine"), but because of the fact that Franken was running behind Norm Coleman (50%-43% in the latest Rasmussen poll and trending in the WRONG direction) even BEFORE his latest tax woes. For someone whose most compelling selling point is his supposed "electability" that is NOT good news.
One of the main complaints against Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer (and related to the "electability" meme) is that he is supposedly "too liberal". I personally find this agrument to be rubbish. This is the state in Minnesota in 2008, not Georgia or Mississippi or South Carolina in the 1990s. This is a time where we witness conservative failures all around us, from the healthcare crisis, to crumbling infrastructure (literally here in MN), to a drawn out war where thousands have died while the Halliburtons of the world reap millions, if not billions, of dollars, to record homeforclosures amid stagnant wages and huge trade deficits, to the lack of anything being done about global climate change and enironmental degradation, to the eviceration of our civil liberties amid the fear-mongering of law breakers, etc., etc., etc. Now is NOT the time to fear being labeled a "liberal", it is a badge of honor to be worn proudly as we try to clean up this morass the Republicans are leaving us.
There may very well be great reasons to support Al Franken (I personally like the guy and will wholeheartedly support him should he be the DFL candidate), but "electability" and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer being "too liberal" are NOT among them.
(a version of this cross posted at
mnblue)