Published on September 20, 2008 at 1:30 pm .
Yesterday, the much vaunted McCain-Palin ticket rolled into the Twin Cities. Team McCain has been crowing for weeks about how Palin’s addition to the GOP ticket has generated a massive increase of enthusiasm among the Republican faithful. Apparently, McCain-Palin rallies have generated record crowds all across the country (although, media reports have revealed that the McCain campaign has exaggerated their crowd counts).
Well, John McCain did draw a large crowd to his rally up in Blaine yesterday - something in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. Not bad. But you want to know what is really impressive? The Obama counter-rally at Peavey Plaza, which did not feature either Barack Obama OR Joe Biden (or even a state-wide elected official) drew 3,500 people! (Added by Aaron: …and it was only announced two days in advance!)
That, my friends, is a first rate example of the enthusiasm gap in this election - a big reason why Obama is going to carry Minnesota and win the election in six weeks.
Published on October 30, 2007 at 9:39 am .
So, I’m addicted to this site called “Digg.” I’m sure that many of you are familiar with it but for those who aren’t, here’s a quick explanation: it allows anyone to submit stories and then the community votes them up or down. Once they get a certain number of votes the story reaches the frontpage (which is becoming increasingly difficult as the site is immensely popular). This ensures an oddly addicting collection of tech-geek, underground news stories, funny videos, legitimate news, and pure nonsense. At any rate, I tell you all of this so that you’ll have some feel about how incredibly surprised I was when I saw this headline on the frontpage: “Minneapolis Mayor First to Use Plug-In Hybrid as “Official” Car.” Rybak made Digg! That’s pretty cool!
A little snippet from the article linked to:
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak may be the first mayor in the nation to drive a plug-in hybrid vehicle as his official city car.
Since he was first elected in 2002, Mayor Rybak’s official car has been a Toyota Prius. But the dramatically superior gas mileage of a plug-in hybrid vehicle prompted him to make the switch: he had his hybrid converted to a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, from which he expects to get about 70 miles per gallon (mpg) compared to his average 40 mpg with the Prius.
In addition to this being cool both on the geeky “he made Digg” level and the “Rybak’s green-chic” level, I think it’s also an important example of how these little things put us on the map as a state. It may seem silly to put it in that light, but Minneapolis has fostered a reputation as a very techno-savvy, on the cutting-edge city (we were featured in Popular Science a year ago for as much) and these little stories push that image along. And image is a very fleeting, amorphous concept to capture and promulgate, yet it fuels so much of how the rest of the country sees us (and how they invest in us).
I don’t mean to make such a modest story into such a long post (and it is a modest story), but I’ve always felt that Minnesota is different. We take pride in being on the cutting edge from everything from crop yield to welfare roll conversion (getting people off welfare roles into good paying jobs); we reject mediocrity and strive for something better. Unfortunately, it’s felt as though we’re losing that as a state. We’re fine with lower education standards, we’re complacent when our infrastructure crumbles, we favor low taxes over good, cheap universities, and we ignore a falling edge over the rest of the country. I guess it’s just nice to be reminded that in some very modest way, our old spirit is still alive and maybe will rise again.
Yesterday, the much vaunted McCain-Palin ticket rolled into the Twin Cities. Team McCain has been crowing for weeks about how Palin’s addition to the GOP ticket has generated a massive increase of enthusiasm among the Republican faithful. Apparently, McCain-Palin rallies have generated record crowds all across the country (although, media reports have revealed that the McCain campaign has exaggerated their crowd counts).
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