Blowing off “Almanac” last Friday and going to the Guthrie Theater instead seemed like a good way to put an end to an exhausting Election Day/Week/Month/Year and exorcise the ghosts of a long campaign season. We got rush tickets to the penultimate performance of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge,” ready to be transported to working-class Brooklyn, purely for the escapism, with no exit poll demographics in mind.

At first, it seemed to be working. I let pass without mention a trivial thought: that 1956, the year Miller wrote the play, was the same year that voter turnout in Minnesota voters last topped 80 percent, a hoped-for but not-quite-achieved figure on Tuesday. When the play started, I didn’t notice that Eddie, the boorish central character who used to be likable, sometimes wandered the stage like a second-debate John McCain.

But then came the climactic moment at the end (spoiler alert!) when Eddie phones the authorities from a pay phone to report that Marco and Rodolfo, his wife’s cousins from Italy, are working in the United States illegally. As immigration officers drag away Marco, the older cousin who has been sending his longshoreman’s wages back home to feed his family, he spits in Eddie’s face, pointing and shouting for all the neighbors to hear: “That one! I accuse that one! That one!”

Suddenly, rushing back unbidden and unwelcome, came visions of McCain applying the same apparent epithet to Barack Obama in that second presidential debate. Arthur Miller’s artifice dropped away, and it was as if McCain’s about-face on immigration policy and his subsequent loss of the Latino vote had just played out before us, amid a revival of McCarthyesque furor. It was time to go home and check the the gap in the Franken-Coleman U.S. Senate race, which had shrunk by another 17 votes, to 221, in the short time we’d spent with Eddie and Marco, a half century ago in Brooklyn.

Today at 11 am MPR’s Midday is broadcasting the final candidates’ debate between Republican Michele Bachmann and Democrat El Tinklenberg for Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District seat. MnIndy’s Andy Birkey and Steve Perry are liveblogging the event here.
Click here to watch in a new window.

MPR’s Midday program at 11 a.m. today will be given over to the last debate between Rep. Michele Bachmann and her 6th district opponent, El Tinklenberg. You can find the live feed here at the appointed hour. And come on back to MnIndy for our live blog of the half-hour-long faceoff.

Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi (shown), U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher will kick off an apparently new Women for Madia campaign in Bloomington Monday morning. Photo: house.gov

Two indications that the tight 3rd Congressional District race remains in the nation’s crosshairs, even as U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s antics in the 6th District grab headlines.

First, the big guns keep coming: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose very name and title are enough to spur derisive jeers at Republican rallies, will campaign in person with DFL 3rd District candidate Ashwin Madia today. (Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner visited the state on Paulsen’s behalf last week.)

And the national media continue to turn attention to the Twin Cities’ western suburbs. (Today it’s a profile of the contest with focus on Madia in the Washington Post — whose Chris Cillizza, keeper of The Fix blog, on Friday abruptly and inexplicably left the 3rd District race off his list of the 25 races for U.S. House where parties are most likely to lose seats, to the consternation of commenters.)

But in a sign that the spectacle in the 6th is drawing focus and donation dollars, Madia released a statement this morning, saying, “Bachmann’s comments represent the very worst in American politics.”

‘Disturbing’ Paulsen ad
Over the weekend, Republican state Sen. Erik Paulsen released a new ad called “Disturbing” that stays warm and fuzzy for about two seconds before turning on the attack graphics and low-register voice-over delivering (disputed) warnings about who Madia will tax and how often he has lied about it:

Three-way debate
KSTP-TV hosted a debate with all three candidates Friday evening. Here is the full hourlong video:

Dillon speaks!
Earlier on Friday, Independence Party candidate David Dillon took his turn in the U of M Humphrey Institute’s series of noontime events with the 3rd District contenders. (Madia and Paulsen appeared earlier in the week.) Here is a liveblog of the Dillon event, courtesy of the Humphrey Institute’s Smart Politics blog, which also profiled the race over the weekend. And here is audio from Dillon’s appearance, courtesy of MPR’s Polinaut blog (if audio player doesn’t appear below, visit the Polinaut page:

Blip.tv and YouTube versions.

A flashpoint in the 3rd Congressional District mini-debate on TPT’s Almanac program Friday (video) was Republican candidate Erik Paulsen’s charge that DFL candidate Ashwin Madia has illegally coordinated his campaign with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, an independent group. Madia denied it and challenged Paulsen for proof. State Rep. Paulsen produced from his breast pocket a Madia campaign press release, which he said mirrored “exactly almost word-for-word” the DCCC’s own ads.

Read a transcription of the heated exchange after the jump. Also, see the Madia press release — and the DCCC’s own press release that predated Madia’s by a month and a half.

Here’s a transcription of the exchange between Paulsen and Madia on TPT:

PAULSEN: I’ll tell you, he is coordinating his attacks with the DCCC, and that’s wrong.

MADIA: Erik, that’s a strong allegation, and I hope you have some proof of that because that’s absolutely untrue. [On camera, Paulsen begins to pull out a piece of paper from his breast pocket.] What I’d say is, the allegations that you made against me, about, you know — the entire negative campaign that you’re running — you want to talk about phone calls [to independent groups asking them to stop running negative ads], you ought to call your campaign manager and tell him to pull those negative ads if that’s what you want.

TPT’S ERIC ESKOLA: Is there something in the ads you want to set the record straight on?

MADIA: No, I’m going to keep focused on the economy and the people in the 3rd district and getting this nation moving again –

TPT’S MARY LAHAMMER: Okay, Rep. Paulsen, you have something dramatic it looks like you want to –

PAULSEN: I just want to say I have a press release that came right out of the Madia campaign that exactly mirrors the exact DCCC ad they’re running against me to smear my record. Exactly, almost word for word. And so there is coordination. A phone call can be made.

LAHAMMER: And you’re denying these allegations because that’s not allowed, as we know. Right? [Unintelligible: You know(?)] the law.

MADIA: Absolutely. On the one hand, it’s funny he’s telling me to pick ‘em [the phone] up and call them. On the other hand, he’s accusing me of breaking the law. Look, the truth is, of course there’s no coordination. Absolutely not. And I hope you have more than a press release to back that up, Erik, because that’s a very strong allegation.

PAULSEN: It’s got your communication director’s name right on it.

Paulsen’s charge is indeed serious: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s election campaign paid a $100,000 fine for coordinating with an independent group in 2002.

Here’s the Sept. 15 Madia for Congress press release that Minnesota Public Radio’s Curtis Gilbert dug up, which Paulsen presented Friday on TPT as evidence of the Madia campaign’s alleged coordination with DCCC ads. And here’s a July 31 DCCC press release in which the DCCC appears to have itself first raised the charges that it repeated in ads mailed to voters in late September, according to KSTP-TV, which gave the ads an “F.”

The two releases do share identical phrases and even sentences, but whether that constitutes coordination is another question. Both cite as a source the same July 22, 2008, report attributed to National Public Radio (NPR) report — which seems actually to have appeared on NPR rival American Public Media’s “Marketplace” program (relevant part starts at about 24:00):

Remember the second questioner from the second presidential debate? His name was Oliver Clark. Remember how John McCain answered Clark’s bailout question? He said lots of things, but you’ll remember this zinger: “The match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I’ll betcha you may never have even heard of them before this crisis.”

Remember how Clark smiled at that? It turns out Clark gets the last word in that exchange–on his Facebook page. He talks about the whole experience and he’s hilarious. But the best part is his response to McCain’s Fannie and Freddie quip.

Well Senator, I actually did. I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent person. I have a bachelor degree in Political Science from Tennessee State, so I try to keep myself up to date with current affairs. I have a Master degree in Legal Studies from Southern Illinois University, a few years in law school, and I am currently pursuing a Master in Public Administration from the University of Memphis. In defense of the Senator from Arizona I would say he is an older guy, and may have made an underestimation of my age. Honest mistake. However, it could be because I am a young African-American male. Whatever the case may be it was somewhat condescending regardless of my age to make an assumption regarding whether I was knowledgeable about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Next time around maybe the audience should have the opportunity for follow up.

“My friends”…21 times:

Referring to an energy bill, McCain jabbed his finger at Obama, saying, “You know who voted for it? That one.” Which didn’t sit well with one undecided voter, cited by the AP. “I didn’t feel that was very professional,” said Tim Groeger, a 28-year-old accountant from New Jersey. “I felt McCain was very aggressive. Obama seemed to stay cool and collected.”

The handshake that wasn’t (note how McCain taps Obama’s shoulder, then directs the senator to shake Cindy McCain’s hand instead):

Republican incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann and two challengers who hope to unseat her to represent Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District in Washington met in Stillwater Wednesday evening for the first candidates’ forum. In front of a standing-room-only crowd, Bachmann, DFL-endorsed El Tinklenberg and Bob Anderson, the unendorsed Independence Party candidate, sparred mainly over the economy, although energy, the war in Iraq and the Stillwater lift bridge each garnered some attention.

Many people couldn’t get in through the door and watched through the foyer. The crowd, particularly Tinklenberg supporters, got rowdy at times, especially when Bachmann brought up ANWR and offshore drilling.

The best line of the night came when Tinklenberg criticized Bachmann on her offshore and ANWR drilling proposals: “The strategy that she has proposed of ‘Drain America First’ is a bad strategy.”

The Minnesota Independent will have full video available shortly, but here’s a preview of some of the discussion.

On the $700 billion bailout

Bob Anderson, on the Wall Street bailout: "I do not feel that we should put this burden on the taxpayer."

“I do not feel that we should put this burden on the taxpayer,” said Anderson. “We need to do something but this is not the way to go.” He said he would rather have private financiers gobble up some of the problem.

Bachmann was critical of the bailout. “We do have a very real credit crunch but I don’t believe the prescription put forward by Bush and the leadership in Congress is the right way to go.” Of the Senate version she said, “It just has different wrapping paper on it. There’s a lot of spending in there as well as the $700 billion… I will be a ‘no’ vote on that bill.”

Instead she favors privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, suspending the capital gains tax, repealing the Community Reinvestment Act and suspending mark-to-market accounting.

Tinklenberg said he also opposed the bailout. “What the economy, what the financial markets needed most of all on Monday was a sense of confidence. The rebuilding of confidence, the belief that somebody was in charge and somebody was leading and somebody was moving this forward to find a solution,” he said. “And instead what they got was uncertainty and chaos. The ‘no’ vote, you saw what the outcome was.”

He believes assisting families facing foreclosure would have lessened the crisis months ago. “I think we would have made much more progress in terms of helping to stem some of the underlying problems that we have seen in the meltdown over the last week,” he said.

The war in Iraq

Tinklenberg on Afghanistan: "That's where al-Qaida was. That's where bin Laden was. That's where we should've been focusing our effort."

Bachmann says the surge was successful. “We saw a 60-percent improvement level from July 4 to Christmas — what no one thought was possible, the peace that was brought and the calm that was brought to that region,” she said. “Then we went to March of this year, and there was a 70-percent level of improvement. Today, al-Qaida has essentially been vanquished in Iraq.”

Bachmann gave no indication when she thought the conflict might end, but said that the Iraqis should give the United States some funds. “My opinion is that Iraq is getting on its feet. They did have $76 billion in surpluses, and I believe they need to take over the funding for this measure. I don’t believe the United States should be funding the measure.”

Tinklenberg said that turning over responsibility to Iraq and a responsible end to the conflict is his policy. “I have long advocated the idea of a timeframe that would help provide the environment in which the Iraqis would stand up and take more responsibility for their region and for the security of Iraq,” he said. “It’s interesting that now the president and the Iraqi government have also agreed that we need to be moving forward with some kind of a timeframe that establishes that message to the Iraqi people: that we are not there permanently, that we are going to be removing our troops.”

He also said that the United States should never have weakened its presence in Afghanistan by engaging Iraq. “I think we need to reinforce the troops in Afghanistan. They are doing an incredible job there, but we have seen that they are not there in sufficient strength to be able to deal with the resurgence of violence in that country,” he said. “And that’s where we should’ve been fighting from the beginning. That’s where al-Qaida was. That’s where bin Laden was. That’s where we should’ve been focusing our effort. It’s unfortunate that we discovered too late that al-Qaida was not in Iraq. They were not in Iraq until we were engaged there, and that brought them into that country. And now we have to fight to try to quell the violence there while they have also been growing in strength again in Afghanistan.”

Anderson said these decisions need to be left to General Petraeus. “Terrorism is something that we’re going to be dealing with for a long time, and I think we need to be on the offense. We’ve got to be trailing them, keeping an eye on them, surveillance, and troops,” he said. “I’d leave the decision to General Petraeus.”

St. Croix River Bridge

The lift bridge over the St. Croix has been a project that has needed action for years. It’s outdated for the amount of traffic that crosses through the area into Wisconsin, but there is significant disagreement in Stillwater and surrounding communities over environmental, aesthetic and funding considerations.

Anderson didn’t know much about the issue. “I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on this subject,’ he said. “I’d need to be educated on that, that’s for sure.”

Bachmann said: Keep the old bridge and build a new, higher capacity bridge. “I love the lift bridge. I would love to be able to see us keep it, but we also need to have a new bridge, as well. I think it is going to happen, and that’s what I want to make sure during my time in Congress, that we actually get a bill.”

Tinklenberg said community leaders need to reach a consensus on the issue to communicate it to Congress. “I want the bridge decision to reflect a consensus in the community, what the community wants for its future, how it’s going to address the needs of the community, how it’s going to connect with 36 and other communities that are a part of this and affected by it, and then I would do everything I could in terms of going after funding,” he said. “There has been a lot of discussion over a lot of years. I think it’s time to build a consensus in the community and see what the community wants to do, and then I’m going to do everything I can to help them implement it.”

Energy

Bachmann says the answer to energy problems is right under foot. "We have more oil in the United States than in all of Saudi Arabia."

Bachmann talked about drilling. “American energy independence, this is something we absolutely must embrace. I don’t want to see us enriching foreign nations on foreign oil, especially when we’re sitting on the answer to our own problem — we have more oil in the United States than in all of Saudi Arabia, and that’s just in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming,” she said. “We have so much oil here that we don’t need to go outside our country to be truly energy independent.”

Tinklenberg said that energy independence depends on sustainable energy. “I think that there are more things that we can be doing,” he said. “The strategy that she has proposed of ‘Drain America First’ is a bad strategy. It’s bad in that it maintains our dependence on petroleum, and it’s bad in that it reduces the security of our future energy policy. It means that we have used up our reserves. I agree with her: we need to be exploring more domestically, we need to identify those reserves, and we need to protect those reserves, because petroleum is going to continue to be a part of our future. But we also need to move aggressively both in the area of conservation and in the area of alternatives. We can do so much of a better job in terms of reducing consumption.”

He attacked Bachmann for not voting for renewables. “And I was disappointed that Rep. Bachmann voted against extending the tax credits for wind and solar. Those are important resources for our future and can be a part of the mix, along with what she has said about natural gas.”

Anderson said he wants a mix of everything. “I believe in ‘All of the Above.’ Drilling in Alaska? They’re telling us that it’s okay,” he said. “I’m no expert, but if the people in the state think we should do it, I guess I don’t have a problem with that.”

In 2000, McCain told the late Tim Russert on “Meet the Press”:

“The vice president has two duties. One is to inquire daily as to the health of the president, and the other is to attend the funerals of Third World dictators. And neither of those do I find an enjoyable exercise.”

[McCain/TP what-might-have-been video below the jump.]

McCain gave his more standard version of the job description in 2006 while in Minnesota to raise money for Gov. Tim Pawlenty:

“The vice president of the United States really only has two duties. One is to break a tie vote in the Senate, in case it’s a 50-50 vote, and the other is to inquire daily as to the health of the president. So I’m not sure that Gov. Pawlenty with the heavy responsibilities he has here would be interested in that.”

In video from TPT, starting at about the six-minute mark, McCain’s remark is followed by Pawlenty’s own standard line in which he swears his lack of interest in the job of vice president (whatever the duties). But seeing the two men together, batting around the vice presidential question early on, offers a glimpse of what might have been, had T-Paw been McCain’s pick — not the stuff of must-see TV, admittedly, but also not the cringefest that a dumbfounded nation awaits today.