North Star Politics

It's obvious that this blog's content over the last couple of months has been abysmally thin. I wrote a while back that I was working on a long-term blogging project, and I was. Unfortunately, I wasn't putting a lot of time into that, and even less time into regular posting. Today, that project is abandoned. The project was a statewide list and analysis of races to watch, complete with predictions, à la the Cook or Rothenberg reports; unfortunately, the knowledge to do a competent and comprehensive job just wasn't there.

Thus, expect much more posting here, starting tomorrow. This blog isn't going away anytime soon.

Congrats to MN Publius, who just got a link today from John Aravosis of AMERICAblog, one of the biggest out there. Always nice to see one of our own get recognized. It seems like Montana gets all the attention.

Technorati Tags: Dick Cheney Michele Bachmann MN-06 MN Publius

The big surprise so far at the convention seems to be that there has been no big surprise so far. Amy Klobuchar was easily endorsed yesterday, now that Ford Bell is in for the primary and out of the endorsement contest. Mike Hatch, the front-runner for the entire campaign so far, won the gubernatorial contest, though he will face a significant primary challenge from Sen. Becky Lourey, who finished last at the convention.

The choice in the Senatorial race is clear. Ford Bell, in dropping out of the endorsement and choosing to run in the primary, revealed himself as a masochistic political rookie. Instead of losing in front of the DFL convention, he'll be losing in front of the entire state of Minnesota in the primary. Amy should be able to turn her focus to the general election, because that's what's really important. Unfortunately, due to Bell's self-indulgence and -promotion, she'll have to watch her back until September.

The same is true for Hatch and Sen. Lourey. Rather than being able to focus on Tim Pawlenty, an uphill battle if there ever were one, Hatch will have to watch out for Lourey; this is especially true because Lourey, unlike Bell, will probably be a strong enough primary challenger that Hatch will be unable to ignore her.

On the whole, it looks like the convention has gone off well so far. That's what we need; a botched convention would have been a bad sign - and a bad aftertaste - for the rest of the election season.

Technorati Tags: MN-Sen Amy Klobuchar Ford Bell MN-Gov Mike Hatch Becky Lourey DFL convention