Rare News Desk
Last week President Obama took a two day trip to Minnesota for a town hall meeting, a policy speech, a high-dollar fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and an extended photo-op with a woman who’d written him a letter.
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But why Minnesota? It wasn’t because Minnesota Democrats need his help.
While typing “Senator Al Franken” still feels strange for Saturday Night Live fans of a certain age, the artist formerly known Stuart Smalley is on track to win a second term in the Senate. Franken leads his likely Republican opponent, Mike McFadden, by double digits in most polls. One poll last month showed McFadden only six points behind, but that was probably a statistical outlier.
The X factor is money: McFadden, a successful investment banker, comes from a well-healed milieu that’s ripe for fundraising and has a personal fortune that he can tap as well. Still, McFadden’s campaign war chest is a fraction the size of Franken’s at the moment.
Even if McFadden closes that gap he’ll still be a political novice (this is his first run for office) running against an incumbent senator, and a Republican in a state that leans Democratic (or rather leans Democratic-Farmer-Labor, to be precise).
In short, this is a race that could conceivably become competitive, but probably won’t be. Beyond the Senate race, the incumbent Democratic Governor Mark Dayton is leading all of his potential Republican opponents by margins comparable to Franken’s.
There are a couple of potentially competitive House races in Minnesota (hence the DCCC fundraiser), but even there the incumbent Democrats are safer than at least a dozen others elsewhere in the country. So if Minnesota isn’t much of battleground this election cycle, why was President Obama there last week?
Well, he was there because it isn’t much of a battleground this election cycle.
“Both parties see opportunity” in Obama’s trip, an AP story had it the day before the president arrived in Minnesota:
For Democrats, their party’s biggest name will draw attention to a signature initiative: the large, upcoming bump in the state’s minimum wage. For Republicans, his presence alone will give them a tangible way to connect targeted Democratic candidates to a struggling president as campaign season intensifies.
But it can’t be that the trip was equally good for both parties. In the zero-sum game of two-party politics, what’s good for Republicans is bad for Democrats and vice versa. Republicans are right that Obama’s unpopularity weighs down on other Democrats, but in Minnesota the partisan fundamentals are such that it won’t matter much.
Obama can breeze through the state, raise some money, push for whatever is left of his policy agenda, and maybe collect some information from attendees at his appearances to keep Democrats’ data on the base up to date. His copartisans can absorb any damage. Obama won’t be popping up in states like North Carolina or Arkansas, because in the real battlegrounds, his presence would actually hurt.
Obama’s unpopularity is Republicans’ greatest asset in this election. Where Democratic candidates are in real trouble, you won’t see Obama anywhere near them.
