Okay, Al Franken is funny and all. I like him. But please, I don't want to hear any of this. There is no way that grownups are going to vote for Stuart Smalley for Senate. Jesse Ventura? Arnold? Do any of these ring a bell?
posted by MN Politics Guru @ 21:10
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6 Comments:
Rig a bell? They both won!
And Ventura, at least, was a decent governor. I'd take him over Pawlenty any day of the week.
I thought Frankin was running for Senate against Coleman??
I had the same reaction when I saw a Stuart Smalley sketch one night on a re-run channel. My heart just sank. All Norm's people would have to do is run a clip of Franken with that ridiculous wig and voice, and ask, "Is this someone you want making decisions about war and peace etc.?" Believe me, it would work.
Franken's a very different kind of entertainer than Jesse or Arnold. Those guys did escapist action flicks. Audiences, particularly men, would imagine themselves on screen as muscle-bound Adonises flying through explosions, blowing up the bad guys, and saving the world to mass adulation. Franken played silly characters audiences laughed at.
The other thing is that Franken is an explicitly partisan entertainer who's spent the last decade writing books calling conservatives "big fat idiots" and "lying liars." Right off the bat, he's not gonna win any cross-over votes from Republicans, and I suspect that kind of thing is a turn-off for independent voters as well. Arnold was known as a Republican contributer, but he didn't go around insulting Democrats all the time. Ventura had his own radio show where he took lots of shots at politicians, but he was an independent, an equal-opportunity basher, so no one party held it against him too much.
And besides, the media and the people hold liberal celebrities to different standards than conservative celebrities. It's not fair, but that's the real world. The only people I've seen who think a Franken candidacy are a good idea live in the DailyKos/DU/Bartcop echo chamber.
Franken will be choosen on his merits, I don't think the entertainer skill set works as well for a liberal as it did for a more straight forward comman sense candidate like Jesse Ventura, but he would be just as electable as an the candidates the DFL is giving us this year.
It's silly to write off a person because they weren't a lawyer or business owner, and instead had a more public profession.
I take back what I said in that last paragraph. Re-read the article and saw the part about getting encouragement from high places. It reminded me that last year, shortly after Franken said he wouldn't run in '06, Harry Reid was a guest on his show, and opened by asking him to reconsider his decision. It may have just been sucking up to the host, but there's usually some laughter or a certain tone of voice in that case. Reid sounded dead serious when I heard him. So anyways, who knows? Money and Name ID really do seem to be everything in D.C.
Also, there are some people in Daily Kos who don't want a Franken candidacy. So it's not a monolithic thing.
I stand by the rest of what I said, though. Look what happened to The Ox last year, a partisan GOP radio host running in a GOP leaning area. He got slaughtered at least in part because he'd spent so much time insulting so many people.
The DFL has other good candidates who could run against Coleman. It's not in such dire straits that it needs Al Franken to swoop in from New York to save it.
i'd vote for him. norm's been impersonating mayor quimby for years now . . .
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