What? Wasn't Phil Gramm available yet?

by Rich Broderick, July 19, 2008 • Had to chuckle at the news that Eric Schultz, former national spokesperson for the 2008 John Edward’s primary campaign, and a state communication director for the 2004 Kerry Presidential run, has decided – after what is described as intensive lobbying by DNC mandarins – to swoop into Minnesota and help rescue Al Franken’s Senate campaign, officially labeled by the Washington Post a couple of days ago as “foundering”

The 2004 Kerry campaign? Edward’s 2008 primary bid? Now there’s a track record that inspires confidence! In no time at all, Franken’s campaign should progress from “foundering” to “flailing.”

It’s still possible that Barack Obama’s Minnesota coattails will be long enough to drag Franken into office. I strongly advise, however, that his campaign team pull the commercial in which Franken tries to make some point about Washington’s corrupt system of lobbying while wearing a shirt that looks like it belongs to George Costanza’s dad and an expression that suggests a bad case of indigestion.

In the meantime, an election that should have been an easy win against Norm Coleman – Norm Coleman, for God’s sake! – a venal, double-talking, undistinguished political hack who has marched in lockstep with George Bush for most of the past six years, has been turned into an uphill fight by DFL delegates bedazzled by Franken’s semi-celebrity status and strangely confident in their own superior sense of who is and who is not “electable.” The same superior sense, I might point out, that determined that Skip Humphrey, Roger Moe, and Mike Hatch were viable gubernatorial candidates.

To paraphrase a crack attributed to Franklin Roosevelt after the 1936 election, you’d think the DFL would have learned by now not to get involved in politics!