I've seen things down in the tunnels. I've seen a rat throw a block party in a gas main and act surprised when the neighbors objected. But I had never seen a campaign diagnose its own problem correctly and then pick the one cure its doctors were begging it not to take.
Until Monday.
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was scheduled to share the stage Monday night with far-left streamer Hasan Piker at a sold-out Minneapolis event hosted by state Sen. Omar Fateh, eight days before the midterms, Fox News reported. Fellow Minnesota Democrats had publicly asked her to cancel. She didn't.
Let's walk through the evidence by flashlight.
Exhibit A: the diagnosis. "Early voting among people under 40 is down, and we need to do everything to get young people to the polls," Omar's campaign told FOX 9. Fair enough. Young voters skip midterms the way I skip daylight. A normal campaign fixes that with buses, door knockers or free pizza. This one went with the most controversial guest available and called it outreach.
Exhibit B: the reviews from her own side. Rep. Angie Craig, a fellow Minnesota Democrat, called Piker's rhetoric "polarizing and dangerous" and said embracing him is "a mistake." Sen. Amy Klobuchar's gubernatorial campaign called some of his past statements "reckless and unacceptable." When Republicans criticize your guest, that's politics. When your own party's candidate for governor does it, that's a smoke alarm.
My source here is Earl, a sewer rat who once invited a raccoon to the colony meeting to "energize the base." "Kid," Earl told me, picking at a bandage, "turnout was great. Everybody showed up to leave." Earl now holds meetings alone. Attendance is one. He says it's a very focused group.
Exhibit C: the big tent. The campaign said Omar "knows the Democratic Party is a Big Tent party." True. And the people standing inside that tent spent the weekend asking her to keep this particular guest outside it. Down here, when the whole tent is yelling, we stop arguing about tent size and check what we just dragged in.
Exhibit D: the timing. University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs told FOX 9 the event would "create a split within the DFL," the state's Democratic party, and could distract statewide candidates from their closing message. So the plan to help Democrats win in eight days is to make every other Democrat in Minnesota spend those eight days answering questions about someone else's event.
Here's the part that should sting. If you live in Minnesota and you're worried about your heating bill, your grocery bill or your kid's school, your party's closing week was supposed to be about you. Instead it's a ticketed fight over a streamer's past comments, with the candidates who will actually be on your ballot left holding the microphone and the apology.
So the campaign set out to fix a youth turnout problem and found one group it could definitely turn out: Minnesota Democrats, lined up to tell her it was a mistake. Earl says that counts as turnout. Earl also says the raccoon still has his key.
This article is satire from The Demorat. The facts come from public news reports; the jokes, the tunnels and Earl the rat are made up.
The real story that inspired this
