smart politics

In a post (not a battleship) christened “The Unsinkable Michele Bachmann,” the University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics blog predicts the 6th District congresswoman will coast to re-election in 2010, if the 6th District sees only the slightest shift of political breezes that lately have been blowing Democrats’ way. And it doesn’t matter what she says, [...]

Recent goings at the Capitol: Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen introduce a bipartisan bill to hinder copper thieves; Rep. Betty McCollum urges the president to enforce the ban on assault weapon imports; and CNN notes that Al Franken has taken to calling himself “Senator-elect.”

An array of odds and ends about Minnesota-centric action in the early days of the 111th Congress: How our delegates voted on the House stimulus package, prospects for a veto-proof majority for Democrats in the Senate, Rep. Keith Ellison’s “mandate,” and the two congressmen who signed on for pay freezes.

Al Franken is taking a scolding in some quarters for declaring victory yesterday after the State Canvassing Board certified that he received 225 more votes than former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman in Minnesota’s Senate recount. So it’s probably best if he stays off the front steps of his downtown Minneapolis condo today and makes no public comment about this development: A University of Minnesota political scientist has calculated that Franken stands a 67 percent chance of winning re-election to the Senate in 2014 — assuming he ever gets seated in the first place, that is.

DFL candidate Ashwin Madia spoke Monday over the noon hour at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute, in a Charlie Rose-style dialogue with Prof. Larry Jacobs. Tomorrow, Madia’s Republican opponent in the 3rd district congressional race, state Rep. Erik Paulsen, will appear at the same venue. The title of Madia’s presentation today is “Green Fuel, [...]