An offhand comment by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar when she called on the Editorial Board this month provides a useful frame for examining the 2018 campaign's closing arguments and Minnesota's political psyche.
"We have this unique period of time when we should be governing from opportunity, not crisis," Klobuchar said as she mentioned chronic concerns that the federal government has allowed to fester. "Instead, the [Trump] administration is making a lot of crises, and that's where everyone's attention goes. It's keeping us from getting at some of the tougher things we need to do."
Opportunity vs. crisis, the latter laden with fear. That's one way to sum up the themes the nation's politicians had on offer last week. And because state and local campaigns are increasingly (and overly) nationalized, Minnesota's candidates followed their respective parties' leads.
Democrats nationally and DFLers in Minnesota have been trying to make this election turn on their intention to use government to make health care more affordable. It's the issue that Americans were telling pollsters only a few weeks ago was their top concern. It's what a parade of candidates from both parties told the Editorial Board was uppermost on voters' minds.
Most Democrats are proposing to expand access to a public health insurance option, be it Medicare, Medicaid, MinnesotaCare or some as-yet unnamed iteration. Polls including the Star Tribune/MPR sampling of Oct. 15-17 have found that a substantial majority of Minnesota voters like the idea, seeing it as an opportunity to pay less for a vital service they struggle to afford.
Republicans have countered that the Democrats' "public option" means British-style "socialized medicine." It doesn't — not necessarily, anyway. But even if it did, consider this: A majority of Brits are satisfied with their National Health Service, which costs on average less than half as much per capita as Americans spend on health care and, by some metrics, produces better results.
But last week, a politically convenient development allowed Republicans to go on offense with a topic they prefer: immigration. By midweek, a caravan that originated in violence-torn Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador had swelled to 7,000 people and was headed for the U.S. border.
President Donald Trump responded as if the asylum-seekers were armed thugs, much to be feared. He threatened their countries of origin with loss of U.S. aid, suggested the caravan had been infiltrated by Middle Eastern terrorists (he later conceded that he had no proof, but thought it "very well could be" true), sent troops to the border — and blamed Democrats.