Ciresi says he would’ve beat Coleman; Nelson-Pallmeyer? ‘I don’t know’

What can one say? Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is one classy guy. As much as I admire Mike Ciresi, I was deeply disappointed that he jumped on Coleman’s snarky comment that any generic DFLer would have beat him compared to Al Franken. Team Franken prevailed in gaining the endorsement due to their ground game. He had an incredibly impressive group of people working on getting Franken and his wife in front of people, fund raising, etc. Franken was also on the ground in the 2006 election cycle, helping to get Democrats elected (including US Representative Tim Walz).

Once again, Coleman wants to continue to slime and smear Franken. I’ve been impressed with Franken’s stance during the recount and now the election contest. He gathered a top-notch group to represent him. Compare that to Coleman, whose legal team seems to be simply throwing whatever they can on the wall and hope something sticks to overturn the numbers to his benefit.

I wish Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer well in whatever he chooses to do in the future.

Thanks for talking to Jack.

Whatever the final outcome turns out to be, it is quite clear that the campaign itself would have been quite different if Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer had been the DFL candidate. Instead of a mud-throwing contest where most Minnesotans felt like taking a hot shower, a contest with Jack would almost certainly have been about issues and about the incumbent’s record on those issues. It is hard to see how Coleman would have won such a race. With the economy in the toilet, the war in Iraq as unpopular as ever, and Obama’s masterful campaign, it is possible that our newest Senator may be Franken. But the campaign didn’t have to be that bad. We all lost out.

I think Jack was the only DFL candidate that could have won.

I agree that the race would have been different, so it’s hard to tell. But Charley is right, I think, that it would have been run on a different playing field — one where integrity, consistency, and values would have been on the table. It’s hard to beat JNP on that level; and it explains why he had a virtual tie between two people that have a hard time fighting in an arena where those are the central themes.

Jack would have won. He was a candidate with integrity — unlike Norm….

If Franken isn’t the DFL candidate, and instead its JNP, does Barkley stay out of the race?

Kyle, glad you brought up Barkley. No reason to think he wouldn’t have run regardless of which DFLer was running … which makes Ciresi’s math a little hard to figure out, how you get to a double-digit margin with three people in the race.

You get double digit wins when one major party candidate is clean enough to survive the negative ads, runs a positive campaign, and then benefits from the jaw-dropping Nasser Kazeminy scandal erupting a week before the election.

Barkley’s vote was from Democrats who disliked Franken and Republicans who couldn’t stomach Coleman. It only makes sense that Ciresi would have kept the Franken votes. That would have left Barkley with no more than 10% of the vote, and half of that would have been pulled from Coleman’s column.

I agree with JNP on all the issues but being right’s not the same as winning an election. I appreciate the passion JNP’s supporters brought to this race but I think Jack lacked the ability to fire up general audiences as well as he pumped up liberals. Ciresi ran a terrible early campaign, but then again no one expected the Netroots to jumpstart this race over ONE YEAR BEFORE THE PRIMARY.

Chis Bowers, Matt Stoller and Markos Moulitsas should all publicly acknowledge that they were HORRIBLY WRONG to interfere in a contested race where all the candidates were progressives (Franken the least so of the three). Democrats elected a Senator, but by making the race be about money instead of issues, they almost blew it.

Jack put it exactly right, we’ll never know, but I feel sure of one thing: we would have had a fiercely negative campaign, and the opening for Barkley, regardless. If Jack hadn’t hit back against the inevitable attacks, he would have been smushed. Even Obama hit pretty hard. Something I liked about him was that he didn’t take (*&^# from his opponents. Jack would have had to have taken the same attitude or concede the race

Besides, it looks like Franken did win. Just be glad the DFL had more than one good candidate, and consider Jack part of that strong bench the DFL has right now. Encourage him to run for something else.

I agree with Eric Ferguson – those who think that with JNP the race would have been about “issues” are living in a dream world. There was a 0% chance that Norm Coleman was ever going to let this race be about issues. Coleman would have done his best to paint Jack as an out of touch, weak, effeminate, lisping, egg-headed, academic liberal who loves abortion and hates Jesus (trust me, he would have taken snippets from Jack’s great book “Jesus Against Christianity” completely out of context, etc). Who is to say whether those attacks would have stuck better/worse than the ones launched against Franken?

As for Mike Ciresi – he makes me laugh. As far as I know the only two people in the world that even like Mike Ciresi are his mom and Betty McCollum.

Can I just say though that Jack’s response above makes me like him even more than I did before. It’s funny how a simple thing like “not being a douchebag like Mike Ciresi” is such a rare quality in a politician these days…

Whoa everybody, I didn’t say anything bad about Ciresi. I’d rather he wouldn’t have said he would have won and taken Coleman’s bait, and I didn’t think he was as strong a candidate as Al or Jack, but I saw all three up close, and they were all decent people who would have had a shot.

As an active DFLer, I try to get over intraparty fights fast and keep my eyes on the Republicans. Contrary to popular belief, they’re not all that weak and they’re not gone.