Paul Wellstone's true heir

I'll have a report up later about the Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer event in Buffalo today. It was an outstanding event!

Daily Kos has a wonderful story up about the US Senate race in Minnesota!

Don't get me wrong, I like Al Franken. I've bought his books, I've enjoyed his satire, and I found him very personable. I will surely vote for him if he's the candidate the DFL chooses. But this was the seat that would be Paul Wellstone's today if he hadn't died in that awful plane crash.

While Franken's comedy schtick has been outlandish at times, he's not a Wellstone by any means. He reminds me of the same kind of careful, calculating Democrat so many of us on this site constantly complain about.

Exactly. This is a key difference between Franken, Ciresi, and Nelson-Pallmeyer.

Paul Wellstone was fiery, but he engaged in respectful disagreement with his opponents. He never called an opponent a "butt boy" or made any other derogatory comments about them. He simply defeated them by out debating them.

Nelson-Pallmeyer displays the wit needed to continue Wellstone's legacy.

Too many Democrats have a view of Franken that's based on his books and his radio show and they think he's a fighting progressive. I haven't seen much sign of that.

Indeed. It's tough for me to view Franken as progressive. He is not engaging in party building. He's a celebrity running for US Senate. Franken is loved in many of these small rural Minnesota County Units and Senate Districts. Why? One main reason is that Franken events pulled in a lot of money for these units. It served our unit pretty well.

Yet, despite 175 people showing up for a Franken event, only the hardcore progressives remained for the 2 hour county convention afterwards. Despite our work to contact those people on the sign in lists, less than 10% remained active in our party endeavors.

Hardly party building. Despite his books and talk show, at least in my eyes, Franken does not inspire me.

Today, at the event in Buffalo, I found more progressives! I was able to exchange info with them and we will make an impact in our area for the foreseeable future.

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's progressive message resonates with me. It's a message of hope. It's a message of integrity. It's a message of compassion.

Today, JNP told us there were 3 things we could do to hep ourselves and to help his campaign. Support him at the precinct caucuses Feb 5th, donate some money, and tell our friends about him.

Bluewoman and I have done all 3.