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...stop me if you've heard this one, I know I've told it here before.
Many years ago I was a delegate to our District DFL Convention. District is the first level of convention after you become a delegate at the neighborhood caucuses. District Convention selects delegates to the State Convention. Clear?
IOW, it's just one step up from a neighborhood potluck. With the usual DFL chaos and arguing thrown in.
But this is in St. Paul, where let's just say there isn't a lot of swank. It's a working class town and a working class neighborhood. Even the expensive neighborhoods operate with true Minnesota lack of ostentation ("So who do you think you are, then?"... Garrison Keillor did not make that up, he just jumped on it and used it.) At least it was, back then. We're talking mid-80s.
Weasel-boy had just started to turn right, but he was still technically a Democrat. He wanted to run for Mayor.
The Convention is at the neighborhood High School. In the auditorium. Caucuses meet in the gym and the library. This is on a Saturday in (I think) April. Cool, bright, pleasant. People show up in jeans and khakis and corduroy trousers, with plaid shirts, sweaters, denim shirts, etc. Maybe a very casual sport jacket or two, on the "official" types on stage. Most everybody knows everybody, St. Paul isn't a big city and the politically-active bunch socializes a lot.
District Convention goes more or less like this: Rules committee report, adoption of rules, platform committee report, adoption of platform resolutions, delegate selection for the State Convention. Minor floor fights break out all the time as various groups jockey for position but it's mostly friendly.
There's plenty of District Conventions scheduled for the same day, so we also get visits from candidates. When a candidate shows up and wants to yack at us, the order of the day gets suspended (as soon as the motion on the floor is decided,) and the candidate gets a crack. Most candidates show up looking like the people on the stage-- just slightly less casual than the rest of us schlubs. Enough so you can tell they made an effort to slick up the hair, shave, put on the clean shirt, etc. But no side. They arrive unobtrusively, tap the elbow of one of the committee folks, and let them know they'd like a crack at us whenever.
There are many, many breaks in the action while people re-group and suchlike. People wander in and out, hang out by the snack table, slide outside for a smoke break or fresh air, etc.
It's CASUAL, get it? Small town-ey.
So, here I am, about halfway through the morning. It's some platform resolution I'm not interested in, but it's very contentious and dragging on and on, so I wander out for some fresh air. Not many of us out there. I'm standing by the front doors of the High School, enjoying a little sunshine.
And then three big, dark sedans in a row pull up to the "no parking" area at the curb in front of the doors. Black, navy, something like that. In the Crown Vic, Mercury, low-end Lincoln range? Something like that. Pseudo-limos, anyway.
And a bunch of guys in SUITS pile out of the first two. SUITS! With TIES.
OK, this is the 1980s, they have what were then known as CAR PHONES. And Pagers. A couple of them head importantly into the High School.
Look, even the GOVERNOR didn't pull that crap back then. He'd have a nice car and a coupla aides, sure... but he'd be dressed like everyone else and he'd just get out and head in. No big deal.
A few minutes pass. The guys in suits come back out. They go up to the third car, the one that didn't open up. The door opens. Someone is on the car phone in there. Natter-natter.
Out comes Norm the Weasel, in a suit. Tie and all. Looking like the New Yawker he basically is, the carpetbagging sleazeball. (New York Democrats just laughed at him... he needed a smaller pond to get any attention, so he came to Minnesota.)
The other guys in suits surround him and they hold the door for him to go into the High School.
Me and a couple of other delegates are left standing out there with dropped jaws, like "What? Did we just see what we just saw?"
This was a guy with a serious case of pompous self-importance and he was barely past the low-level local office holding stage. He was already turning right, or "centrist", which played reasonably well in St. Paul, which is old-fashioned in many ways. Well, it was. Back then.
But I knew, watching that performance, that it would not be long before Norm the Weasel found his true spiritual home among the IRs, as they were then.
And I was right.
That's who Norm is.
That's why he NEVER should have gotten a crack at Paul Wellstone's Senate seat.
That's why I really, really, REALLY want to see him get his butt kicked clear back to the Empire State, where he can vanish into the milling horde of humanity and eventually find his true level, running a which-shell-hides-the-pea con game on a cheap and sleazy street corner.
helpfully,
Bright
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