We have (oh, finally) elected Obama. We’ve done a good thing, for ourselves, for our country, and for the world. If you were part of this, pat yourself on the back. Celebrate. Treat yourself to a nap, then to a second evening with champagne, or maybe the other way around. (Dr. A, take two of both, please.)

Then have a seat and look around. As I pointed out in the wee, weary hours of last night, many of us failed the first beyond-Obama test. We hired our guy but sent him into the job without all the tools he could use. In Minnesota, a state that went 54% for our president-elect, only 42% voted for the senator who supports the same changes he does.

It’s time for the second test. It’s time to get a hold of your freshly elected representative and your senators, if you know who they are yet. Congratulate those who just won a race. Then get down to business.

Tell them that you didn’t vote for Obama for his charisma. Tell them you didn’t elect him to put the cutest first family ever in the White House. Tell them McCain was wrong about it being because Obama is black.

Tell them you meant it when you voted for change and that one of the first things that is changing is how you and they do business. They sent you email every six hours for the last several weeks. Tell them they should expect to hear from you more often now. They told you when and where action was needed. Tell them you’ll be doing the same for them.

Start now by telling them which of Obama’s inititiatives you expect them to support and make a priority. Remind them that their jobs depend on it. Remind them that they’re not alone in doing this. They still know how to reach you if they need you to rally or write letters or rouse the rabble in some other way.

Tell them you voted for Obama because he inspired you to be a citizen, not just a voter. Then be one.

This is a test. We’re all being graded.

As I sit here, watching local election results come in, I find myself very proud of my country and disappointed in my state. As a nation, we rejected cynicism, rejected the politics of fear. We listened to someone tell us we need to work, and we cheered. After months of hearing the uneasy question, “Are we ready?” we said, “Duh!” We watched the new first family walk out in front of an elated crowd and were unashamed to say that we cried.

Minnesota stood behind Obama with a ten percent margin. That looks like a lot of support–until you look at the results in our other races. We’re sending Michele Bachmann, who doesn’t believe that Obama has America’s best interests at heart, who saw nothing wrong with the Obama Waffles, to Washington to work against him. We’re sending Eric Paulsen, who is merely somewhat smoother and less transparent than Bachmann, to do the same. With his election, Minnesota actually makes its House delegation more conservative.

With 92% of the vote in, it looks as though we’re also sending Rove’s boy Norm back to the Senate. It’s hard to say for sure, but this race should not be close. There was only one candidate in this race whose priorities matched Obama’s.

Looking further down the ballot, there’s much to be happy about and proud of. Dangerous judicial candidates were locked out. We stepped up to pay for the things we say we value. But closer to the top, we failed. We chose the president who asked the most of us, but in our first test, we gave him nothing.

We can’t do this, people. We elected a man whose power lies largely in his ability to move us. If we stand where we have always stood and refuse to budge, we will ensure his failure. If we do not move, we fail ourselves. And we cannot afford to fail.

When you head to the polls tomorrow–whenever you evaluate politicians–there’s one question you should ask yourself. “Who makes me afraid?”

I’m not telling you to think about who you’re afraid of. I’m asking you to do something very different and think about who wants you to be afraid.

Who goes beyond talking about our problems to paint you a picture of the most dire consequences of not voting for them? Who’s telling you you’re going to die or go to hell or lose your country? Who is telling you your family is threatened? Your marriage? Your children? Your job? Your house? Your vote?

Fear has its place in making choices. It keeps you from walking too close to that edge or taunting that bear or trying to beat that train. It’s excellent at pushing you to make snap judgments when you face an immediate danger.

Aside from that, fear is a lousy basis for decision-making. The thing that makes fear so useful in that dangerous instant–the ability to suppress conflicting thoughts–makes it counter-productive when you have a complicated situation to evaluate. It’s difficult enough to sort through some of the issues and competing interests that we elect our representatives to deal with without fighting fear’s little injections of adrenaline that clamor for a decision right now!

That’s why it’s always worth looking at who wants you to be afraid. It is possible that they’re just communicating the urgency they feel over a particular issue. However, it’s also possible that they don’t want you thinking very hard about the rest of what they have to say. Anytime you see fear injected into a campaign, it’s always worth taking a step back until you can figure out which it is.

So, as you prepare to vote, don’t forget to ask, “Who makes me afraid?”

Mike has The Last Edition of the Carnival to Replace Michele Bachmann. Ever. up at Tangled Up in Blue Guy.

Didn’t think there was anything new to know about Bachmann? Heh. Try the world’s creepiest Christmas letter and an actual good reason to let Bachmann keep talking. See? There’s always something more to learn, one more barrel bottom for her to scrape. Unless we stop her.

Enjoy.

I just…I couldn’t disappoint all the Googlers. Apologies to Jackie DeShannon, Donna Weiss, Kim Carnes and Betty Davis.

Her ire is getting old,
Her lips filled with lies
Her heart is always cold
She’s got Michele Bachmann eyes
She’ll turn bigotry on
You won’t have to think twice
She’s bright as New York snow
She got Michele Bachmann eyes

And she’ll hate you
She’ll berate you
All the while segregate you
She’s caught on tape
And she knows just what it
Takes to make a pro gape
She sees Sarah Palin’s senseless rise,
She’s got Michele Bachmann eyes

She’ll let your bridges fall
It whets her appetite
She thinks you’re all in thrall
She got Michele Bachmann eyes
She’ll say a prayer for you
Pretend she’s playing nice
She hopes you have no clue
She’s got Michele Bachmann eyes

She’ll evict you
And afflict you
Help a bad government restrict you
She’s in a scrape
And she knows just what it
Takes to make a pro gape
Everyone thinks she’s so high,
She’s got Michele Bachmann eyes

And she’ll hate you
She’ll berate you
All the while segregate you
She’s caught on tape
And she knows just what it
Takes to make a pro gape
Everyone thinks she’s so high,
She’s got Michele Bachmann eyes

And she’ll hate you
She’ll berate you
Segregate you
She’s got Michele Bachmann eyes

She’ll evict you
And afflict you

Okay, apologies to everyone else, too. Blame the margarita. I do.

This is an enhanced version of my sample ballot for Tuesday. I put one together every election for me, my husband and anyone else who wants to trust my political judgment. I read the candidates’ statements, look at endorsements, and Google for red flags. This isn’t so important for nationwide or statewide elections, but it’s critical for positions like school board and open judges’ seats, which don’t get much coverage.

I’m sharing my sample ballot with a few more people than usual this year. In order to make it more useful, I’ve included races in which I’m not eligible to vote but about which I have strong opinions (uncontested seats are not included). Each pick contains a link or links to my rationale for the choice. Not all of them were written by me, but I agree with them all.

Enter your address here to find out where you vote and who’s on your ballot. Also has links to candidate profiles.

Here are my picks:

U.S. President: Barack Obama [why]

U.S. Senate: Al Franken [why and why]

Supreme Court Associate Justice, Seat 3: Paul H. Anderson [why]

Supreme Court Associate Justice, Seat 4: Lorie Skjerven Gildea [why]

Appeals Court Judge, Seat 16: Terri J. Stoneburner [why]

Sales Tax Amendment: No [see below]

U.S. House, District 1: Tim Walz [why]

U.S. House, District 2: Steve Sarvi [why and why]

U.S. House, District 3: Ashwin Madia [why and why]

U.S. House, District 4: Betty McCollum [why]

U.S. House, District 5: Keith Ellison [why]

U.S. House, District 6: El Tinklenberg [are you kidding me? why and why and why]

U.S. House, District 7: Collin Peterson [highly effective incumbent]

U.S. House, District 8: Jim Oberstar [highly effective incumbent]

Minnesota House, Seat 50B: Kate Knuth [effective incumbent]

Minnesota House, Seat 51A: Shawn Hamilton [why]

Minnesota House, Seat 51B: Tom Tillberry [why]

Minnesota House, Seat 61A: Karen Clark [effective incumbent, technolibertarian opponent]

Minnesota House, Seat 66B: Alice Hausman [effective incumbent, opponent running only as non-incumbent]

Minnesota House, Seat 67A: Tim Mahoney [why]

District Court Judge, 4th District Court, Seat 9: Philip D. Bush [why]

District Court Judge, 4th District Court, Seat 53: Jane Ranum [see below]

District Court Judge, 4th District Court, Seat 58: James T. Swenson [highly effective incumbent]

Hennepin County Soil and Water Supervisor, Seat 3: James Wisker [see below]

Hennepin County Soil and Water Supervisor, Seat 5: Karl Hanson [see below]

Hennepin County Commissioner, District 5: Randy Johnson [no serious opponent]

Hennepin County Commissioner, District 6: Jan Callison [more direct experience]

Minneapolis Schools Operating Levy: Yes [why]

Minneapolis Schools Referendum: No [why]

Minneapolis School Board (3): Carla Bates, Jill Davis, Lydia Lee [why]

Osseo School Board (3): Jennifer DeJournett, Dean Henke, Teresa Lunt [why and why]

Annandale School Board (3): Bryan Bruns, Michael J. Dougherty, Michelle R. Miller [see below]

Lakeville School Board (3): Judy Kelliher, Kathy Lewis, Ron Schieck [see below]

Other Elections: Let me know if you don’t see your school board here and want it included. I’ve included those where I know I have readers, but I’m happy to look at others.

My Reasons
Sales Tax Amendment (Legacy Amendment): I’m voting no on this one for two reasons. One is that even in Minnesota, where we exempt clothing and much food, sales taxes are still regressive taxes. The other is that, barring an emergency, I want to keep the anti-tax magical-thinking idiots accountable for their votes. We’re just not facing that kind of an emergency in Minnesota right now. Update: See the comments for someone who disagrees with me for some pretty good reasons.

District Court Judge, 4th District Court, Seat 53
Both of these candidates are highly qualified, and either would be a good choice. I chose Ranum, frankly, because she is endorsed by more judges.

Hennepin County Soil and Water Supervisor, Seat 3
There are only two credible candidates in this race. Wor
kcuff is running on an anti-gay-marriage platform (WTF?). Klatte is talking about environmental issues, at least, but does not appear to have a grasp of what the job entails. I chose Wisker over Torell because this is obviously Wisker’s passion. His degree and work experience relate directly to the responsibilities of this position.

Hennepin County Soil and Water Supervisor, Seat 5
While I’m not thrilled with Hanson’s statement of priorities, his statement is at least readable. Beck provides no indication that he knows what this job entails.

School Board Elections
My priorities in choosing school board candidates are as follows. I eliminate anyone who is trying to use the school board as a platform for noneducational issues or who otherwise demonstrates that they don’t understand or don’t respect the position they’re running for. I watch very carefully for the buzzwords that indicate an attempt to inject religion into the classroom or to manage school spending strictly to keep taxes down. I give a premium for nonprofit and governmental board service.

School Levies
I’m not a fan of these, as I think school funding is a burden and a privilege that should be shared generally. However, as artificially enhanced property values fall and in the absence of a recognition at the state or federal level that unfunded mandates are a real problem, many of these school districts find themselves in immediate trouble. Many of the states levy requests are renewals, others are required to meet the needs of growing districts or aging school buildings. I haven’t seen one of these on which I wouldn’t vote “yes.”

Norm Coleman’s statements that the allegations contained in a suit filed by a Texas Republican were “false and defamatory” (and that the suit’s timing was determined by Coleman’s filing suit against Al Franken’s campaign) might be just a bit more credible if he didn’t accuse all his political opponents of lying about him.

Those accusations themselves might be more credible if he didn’t make them in lawsuits that were dropped after each election. They might also be more credible if he hadn’t been the first to go personal in his negative ads.

Just sayin’.

In my last post, I talked about the many excellent reasons to vote against Norm Coleman for senator. The fact that his third-party challenger has drawn down Coleman’s poll numbers while leaving Franken’s untouched suggests that lots of people agree with me on that. What I have trouble understanding is why more of them aren’t voting for Al. I’m excited just to have the chance.

One note of disclosure before I start: I haven’t always been an Al Franken fan. Saturday Night Live was okay when he was writing for them, but I really despised Stuart Smalley. It’s a Minnesota thing. To really understand, you have to deal with in-your-face meekness and drive past Hazelden every time you visit your family.

No, my love affair with Al Franken started in 1996 when I heard he’d put out Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations. I loved that he didn’t merely look shocked and ask, “How can all these conservative mouthpieces lie like that and get away with it?” as so many others were doing. No, he took the blowhards’ own schtick and skewered them with it. That he used their tactics to be much funnier than they were was a bonus.

It was Franken’s next book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right that made me take Franken seriously. In this book, he dropped the schtick for an emphasis on research. He demonstrated, clearly (while still being funny), that policy should not be made on the basis of what one thinks should be the truth, especially not when the truth is available. For what was largely sold as satire, that book is one of the most thoroughly researched documents I’ve seen.

That wasn’t the only thing Franken did in Lies. He’s the first writer I’ve seen talk about his research staff (whom he worked with while a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard) in the text of his book, rather than relegating them to the acknowledgments. That impressed the hell out of me. He didn’t have to do it, just like lawmakers don’t have to recognize that their staffers play a huge role in governing our country, but he did. That makes a difference in the quality and loyalty of one’s staff, as I can attest after having seen them at Franken HQ and the get out the vote campaign.

Lies was also where I discovered that Franken was a huge Paul Wellstone fan and supporter. Franken had been living in New York for twenty years. He didn’t need to follow Minnesota politics then, but he did that too. As a Wellstone fan myself, that means a lot to me.

Shortly after the book came out, around the time his radio show started up to combat the right-wing noise machine, a local magazine ran the cover story, “Why Not Al?” It suggested–in 2004–that a 2008 senate run wouldn’t be such a strange or unwelcome thing. I agreed completely. A progressive, evidence-based senator? Hell, yes! That’s exactly what I wanted then and what I want now.

But what about his temper, I hear? A couple of thing, actually. Have you ever noticed that the video clips of Franken’s “scary” temper are usually about 20 seconds long? I’ll let Al add the context they’re missing:

I think the [ad] you’re probably referring to is of me being “angry” right? And there’s one in which I swear and I talk about the shamelessness of somebody in it and this was when Fox in August of 2003 said that our soldiers in Iraq were safer than residents of California. They were trying to trivialize the danger that our troops were in order to serve a political agenda, which is to say that the war was going well. Britt Hume made the point, he said Iraq is the same size as California and yet we’re losing only 1.7 troops a day while six people died every day in California. Well, there are 300 times more people in California. When this was pointed out to Brit Hume, instead of apologizing to our troops and the families of our troops, he said: ‘Well admittedly it’s a crude comparison, but it’s illustrative of something.’

My response when I heard that was, “Yeah, it illustrative of something. It’s illustrative of what a jerk he is.” But instead of jerk I used a different word and I’m not happy with my reaction to that, and it wasn’t a comedy routine. It was just me being angry that they had trivialized the danger that our troops were operating under. I’ve been on seven USO tours. I see how magnificent our troops are. I don’t apologize for being outraged when Fox News deliberately trivializes the danger that our troops are operating under. I don’t like the way I did it and I don’t like that it’s on tape.

There’s also another thing they’ve done. I tell the story about Paul Wellstone running alongside his son David Wellstone when David was in cross country track. It’s a pretty funny story because Paul would run alongside him on this two and a half or three mile race and at the end of the race he would go, “You can do it. Keep going. Take this guy.” And I do this impression of Paul. Well, they have taken a tape of me and sped it up to make me look like I’m crazy. And it’s all this distortion and they just want to distract from the real serious issues that Melvin was referring to. We have issues regarding education, regarding health care, regarding jobs. My goodness we’re seeing the economy collapse and there’s no credibility. We have no leadership anymore.

There’s a lot to be angry about at the moment. Personally, I want a representative who doesn’t shrug these things off. And Franken has demonstrated, with his books and his radio show, that being angry doesn’t make him less effective.

As for the rape joke, um, so what? Yes, rape jokes are going to be painful to rape victims. The world’s funniest joke is going to be painful to those who lost someone to gun violence. Every (good) joke is going to be painful to someone. If you want to judge Franken’s views toward women, evaluate him when he’s being serious.

And whatever your views on pornography, don’t whine that he wrote about it in Playboy. Really. I want a politician who isn’t afraid to talk about sex. I want one who is perfectly clear that abstinence-only sex education is a failure and who is more concerned about the quality of justice that our country provides than about whether her marble breasts are covered. Enough with the squeamish Puritans, already.

Speaking about policy positions, I love Franken’s policy pages on his campaign site. Some politicians tell you why an issue is important. Some tell you what steps they want to take. Franken does both. For example, from his education page:

In addition to funding issues, I believe that the No Child Left Behind law must be dramatically reformed or scrapped altogether. I’m for accountability, but I’m not for the deeply-flawed NCLB system. I once read about something called McNamara’s Fallacy. It goes like this:

The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can’t easily be measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can’t be measured easily really isn’t important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can’t be easily measured really doesn’t exist.

and

— Reading comprehension and math skills tests only measure reading comprehension and math skills (and, I suppose, test-taking skills). We should measure critical thinking, teamwork, creativity, and other important skills. And we have to reverse the narrowing of our curriculum that has de-emphasized science, art, civic, and physical education.

— Stop duplicative testing. My daughter taught third grade in a public school for three years, and she was constantly frustrated by the amount of classroom time that had to be devoted to testing and test preparation. While we need to measure student progress, too many districts have overlapping district, state, and federal tests. We should audit tests at the district, state, and federal level to ensure that this doesn’t happen.

— Instead of punishing low-performing schools, use research-based interventions to help them improve. Give them the resources to hire, develop, and retain the best teachers by offering increased pay, safe working conditions, and sufficient support staff and facilities.

Whereas Coleman doesn’t say what he wants to do for us. Instead he tells us what he did before. He doesn’t have a general education policy page (seriously), but this is from his college costs page:

— Senator Coleman introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the College Textbook Affordability Act of 2007, to reduce the astronomical cost of college textbooks. The recently passed Higher Education Reauthorization bill included language nearly identical to this proposal by Senator Coleman. As every student and parent of a college student knows, there is an enormous discrepancy between the price of books at regular book sellers and those at college bookstores. The Coleman legislation would help bridge this gap..

— This year, Senator Coleman joined with Republican and Democratic colleagues in a bipartisan effort to ensure that funding for the Perkins Loans program, a vital source of reduced interest loans for students from low income families, remains at $65.4 million and is not cut.

— In May 2008, legislation was passed into law that would ensure students have federal loans available to them no matter the status of the private loan student market.

Actually, from the way it’s written, I’m not sure he did the third one. Either way, I much prefer Franken’s thoughtfulness and his enthusiasm for meaningful change.

What do I want from my next senator? I want someone with a passion for the truth. I want someone who looks at the evidence in setting policy. I want someone who collects and keeps good minds around him. I want someone who doesn’t forget where he came from even as he succeeds somewhere else. I want someone who will be a voice for the people who are left voiceless. I want someone looking forward, not backward.

I want Al Franken.

There are plenty of reasons to vote against Norm Coleman for senator. He was chosen by Karl Rove to be one of the Bush administration’s buddies in the Senate. He’s a political windsock, going from being a Democrat when city elections required it to being a Republican thug in the Senate to swinging back toward centrist in time for the big local paper to give him this ringing endorsement:

Coleman didn’t begin his Senate service as an agent of bipartisanship. But that’s the note on which he wound up his six-year term and which he has sounded repeatedly in his reelection campaign.

In fact, Coleman almost wasn’t elected senator at all. In 2002, Paul Wellstone would most likely have been elected to his third term in the Senate, despite just having voted against the popular-at-the-time Iraq war resolution. Norm Coleman was a failed gubernatorial candidate, having lost to a professional wrestler four years prior. If it hadn’t been for a plane accident eleven days before the election and some gross misrepresentations of what happened at Wellstone’s memorial, Coleman would probably have been a failed senatorial candidate as well.

Coleman is, at least professionally, a protect-marriage bigot. Despite his campaigning on a family values platform, his womanizing is well enough known that when Garrison Keillor referred to it in Salon, there was some murmuring about bad taste, but no stronger reaction. Despite having model/actress wife and a mistress, Coleman appears to feel entitled to more. Whenever his name comes up, stories like this and this are told of a grab-handy Norm. Put enough of these stories together, and you end up with a picture of a Coleman who likes to come onto women in no position to say no to him, those who have to choose between him and their jobs.

Coleman’s sense of entitlement isn’t limited to sex. He’s currently in his third corruption inquiry of the year. This one involves a CEO suing over payments he says his company improperly made to be funneled to Coleman. The first was over who pays what for Coleman’s DC apartment. Another was fueled by Coleman’s campaign refusing to answer questions about who buys his expensive suits. Coleman seem to have earned his place on the most corrupt list.

Then we get to the campaign itself. Coleman has run an ad campaign so negative that voters not only said it was disgusting, but were actually motivated to vote for someone else. He has again used lies about people remembering Wellstone for his own political gain. He is again suing a political opponent in the last days of a race over advertising. And in a new low, even for him, he just tried to disaffiliate himself from an appalling piece of negative campaigning (a comic book mailer, ironically about rape jokes) while repeating all its allegations for the press.

In short, Coleman’s political stance is determined by expedience, an expedience that includes both campaign support and personal gifts. He’s made it a practice to run the kind of campaigns that divide a country already steeped in vitriol. And I wouldn’t trust him to represent my interests in Congress any more than I would trust him in the smoky back room of a bar.