Good Friday morning Fellow Seekers,

Other than the joint appearance by three of them on Almanac two weeks ago, Wednesday evening’s debate in Golden Valley between Al Franken, Mike Ciresi, Jim Cohen and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer was the closest we’ve had to a debate among contenders for the DFL nomination for U.S. Senate.

I say the “closest to a debate” because the four agree fundamentally on most issues. So the audience was left to reflect on how each of the four is trying to present himself as the best candidate to capture the seat for the DFL. During the seven-minute opening statements by each candidate, each gave a version of what I take to be their stump speech. For me, it was the first time hearing several pieces of it. Esteemed colleague Joe Bodell posted a play-by-play. I taped the whole thing but it’s an hour and a half, so unless several of you plead for it, I won’t post the whole audio. Here’s what I found interesting:

Al Franken

A career in show business gives you name recognition, which is one form of political gold, but not necessarily a stellar substantive credential for holding high public office. Here’s how Franken tries to change that:

“I was also lucky enough to pursue my chosen profession, comedian. I did 15 seasons with Saturday Night Live. All the political satire from that period, I had a hand in. And let me tell you what a satirist does. A satirist looks at a situation, finds the inconsistencies, and absurdities, the hypocrisies and cuts through it all, and gets to the truth. And I think that’s pretty good training for the United States Senate.”

Franken also portrayed writing political satire as evidence of courage:

“Now, after I left Saturday Night Live, I wrote a book. The Gingrich revolution was ascendant, was trying to unravel the safety net, costing our families, so I was a little miffed.

I wrote a book called ‘Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and other observations.’ I took on the Gingrich revolution and I got a reaction to that like I never got to anything else. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing better than making people laugh and I love doing it. But people were coming up to me and saying ‘thank you.’ So I kept doing it.

I wasn’t afraid of Gingrich. I kept writing. I wasn’t afraid of Bill O’Reilly and Karl Rove; I wasn’t afraid of Rumsfeld; I wasn’t afraid of George W. Bush. (dramatic tones here for humorous effect) I wasn’t even afraid of Dick Cheney. And I’m sure as heck not afraid of Norm Coleman. And I’m gonna take him down on his record.

That’s another way Franken differentiated himself from this group. The others mostly mentioned Coleman when the question required them to do so. Franken brought Coleman up, by name, and in a taunting tone, repeatedly, indicating that he is salivating at the prospect of taking Coleman on.

Mike Ciresi

I’ve never heard Mike Ciresi argue a case in a courtroom. In a political setting, he is not a spellbinder. He comes across as amiable, making self-deprecating jokes about being short and hairline-impaired. He acknowledges that he has become wealthy, but talks about his humble roots, and the current “middle class squeeze,” a phrase that recurs in his pitch. His issue discussions tend to be detail-oriented, but dispassionate.

Facing a challenge similar, in some ways, to Franken’s, Ciresi portrays his career as a trial lawyer as experience that will apply to the work of a U.S. senator. I’ve heard from DFLers who are offended by Ciresi’s portrayal of the lawsuits that made him wealthy as if they were political acts.

Ciresi talks about his famous courtroom victories against the tobacco, pharmaceutical and chemical industries not as lawsuits but as David-Goliath battles that show his character:

“I am not a person who has just talked about change. I’ve delivered change…I took on one of the most entrenched and powerful industries in the world, the tobacco industry, and we changed history. They were targeting our children and manipulating the nicotine. And we stopped them… Pharmaceutical companies. I took them on… I’ve stood in the face of power and said ‘no.’ that’s what we need in the United States Senate.”

Another rap you hear from Ciresi skeptics is that a man who has thrived on all-or-nothing confrontations will not fit in the collegial, deal-making environment of the Senate. Ciresi tries to deflect that one with humor:

“Don’t worry, I know how to compromise. Keep this in mind. I’ve had to manage 250 lawyers.
Ninety-nine senators? Day at the beach.”

Jim Cohen

Jim Cohen is the most animated speaker, enunciating with radio-ready crispness, modulating his inflections and punctuating his phrases with constant hand motions. He comes across as likeable, but his presentation lacks a coherent thread or a main point.

Although he is known for his work on environmental issues, and he talks about those issues, he seems to bring special passion to advocating for a single-payer health care system.

“It is in my view, indecent — it rises to the level of obscene, that after 47 years of us wanting universal health care, that we don’t have it today.”

He takes special pleasure in pronouncing each modifier: “A single payer — universal — publicly funded –health care system.”

Cohen comes across as vaguely to the left of Ciresi and Franken (neither of them is calling for single-payer; Franken says he favors it, but it’s not politically practical yet). Yet he calls himself a “pragmatic progressive,” who wants to get things done. He dubs Republicans as “Republican’ts.”

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer has not actually declared his candidacy (he’s still technically in the “exploratory” phase, but the debate organizers accepted his bona fides) and this is his first chance to share a platform with the others. He is the least polished orator, but he speaks with passion.

Moreso than Cohen, and less mysteriously, he comes across as the leftiest of this group. By cutting military spending, by simply not having the U.S. spend half of all the military spending in the world, by repealing Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent and by breaking the power of the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries, the U.S. can afford single-payer health care, universal free pre-school for kids ages 3-5 and tuition-free public universities, Pallmeyer says. Global warming is the biggest challenge we face and his goal would be to cut carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2030. Ninety percent.

He doesn’t think the war in Iraq was a mistake but a purposeful plot, led by Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and their neocon coconspirators, to get permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, to get control of the oil and to advance their larger vision to “achieve permanent global domination.”

“The people who brought us this war see it as a great success. Oil prices have gone through the roof, military spending has gone through the roof. And now they’re targeting Iran. And we’ve got to stop them.”

“All of our hopes hinge on getting out of Iraq. All of our hopes hinge on changing the foreign policy of this county in a way that moves from militarism to actually responding to pressing needs…

What I want to say to you with absolute conviction, is that those policies and priorities can be changed. And we have the power to change them.”

Do we? This kind of rhetoric may disqualify a candidate, with little money or name recognition, from serious consideration, in a statewide race, in a recently purple, blue-trending state. But the overflow Golden Valley crowd responds. Nelson-Pallmeyer gets more than his share of the ovations.

Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.