No Joke: Al Franken for President?

[BlueStateSaint]

Found this via Drudge.

No Joke: Al Franken for President?

After years of shunning the spotlight in the Senate, Minnesota’s junior senator is in the limelight—and would be a formidable candidate for the Democrats.

Feb. 5, 2017, 6 a.m.

Al Franken isn’t a punch line in the Sen­ate any­more. He’s emerged as one of the Demo­crats’ most ag­gress­ive and ef­fect­ive ques­tion­ers of Pres­id­ent Trump’s Cab­in­et nom­in­ees. He’s gen­er­ated nu­mer­ous made-for-TV clips as one of the few Demo­crats will­ing to go full-bore against his party’s top tar­gets—Jeff Ses­sions, Tom Price, and Betsy De­Vos. He’s fi­nally show­ing some per­son­al­ity in the Sen­ate, punc­tu­ated by his laugh-out-loud ex­change with En­ergy Sec­ret­ary-des­ig­nate Rick Perry. And he’ll be one of nine Demo­crats on the Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee ques­tion­ing Trump’s Su­preme Court nom­in­ee, Neil Gor­such. This is Al Franken’s mo­ment in the spot­light, and if he chooses, he could par­lay his good for­tune in­to a bid for the pres­id­ency in 2020.

To be sure, Franken, 65, may not be the Demo­crats’ strongest can­did­ate in the gen­er­al elec­tion. His deeply lib­er­al polit­ics and long-stand­ing dis­missive­ness of Re­pub­lic­ans turn off many voters in the middle. But with Demo­crats look­ing for strident op­pos­i­tion to Trump in the early days of his pres­id­ency, they’re prob­ably not go­ing to be in a prag­mat­ic mood in the primar­ies. So far, much of the lib­er­al ex­cite­ment has centered around Sens. Eliza­beth War­ren and Bernie Sanders, but they will be 71 and 79, re­spect­ively, dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion. Neither has shown any abil­ity to win sup­port out­side the most pro­gress­ive pre­cincts. Franken, at least, can point to a re­cord of elect­ab­il­ity with groups that Demo­crats will need to win over.

I ex­per­i­enced Franken’s polit­ic­al po­ten­tial firsthand after trav­el­ing to Min­nesota to cov­er his reelec­tion bid in 2014. That year, Re­pub­lic­ans swept nearly every com­pet­it­ive Sen­ate race—even giv­ing Sen. Mark Warner a run for his money in Vir­gin­ia. But Franken com­fort­ably pre­vailed against a well-fun­ded GOP busi­ness­man, one of the few tar­geted Demo­crats to run against the tide. He ac­com­plished that by win­ning the rur­al, work­ing-class Iron Range, an area that swung dra­mat­ic­ally to Trump last Novem­ber. Like Trump, he cham­pioned buy-Amer­ic­an le­gis­la­tion for iron and steel com­pan­ies, and helped se­cure new trade pro­tec­tions and tar­iffs against Chinese steel. A Franken ad­viser told Na­tion­al Journ­al he’s likely to find “some com­mon ground” with Trump on trade is­sues. He’s akin to Sen. Sher­rod Brown of Ohio, with more star power to ex­cite the mil­len­ni­als and non­whites who make up so much of the Demo­crat­ic Party’s base.

Franken’s biggest vul­ner­ab­il­ity was that he was bet­ter known for his com­ic turns on Sat­urday Night Live than for his le­gis­lat­ive re­cord. But he’s no or­din­ary comedi­an: He went to the pres­ti­gi­ous Blake School in Min­nesota and gradu­ated from Har­vard. And in the age of Trump, be­ing a tele­vi­sion celebrity isn’t nearly the vul­ner­ab­il­ity that it once seemed. His hand­lers took great pains to avoid the me­dia dur­ing his first term, avoid­ing in­ter­views with Wash­ing­ton-based re­port­ers. But these days, Franken is act­ing a lot more au­then­tic­ally, with his propensity to light­en the mood dur­ing tense hear­ings as com­mon as his hair-trig­ger tem­per.

Franken is com­ing out with a mem­oir this year on Me­mori­al Day, an­oth­er sign he’ll be get­ting more at­ten­tion in the months to come. A Franken spokes­man said the sen­at­or re­mains fo­cused on Min­nesota, and brushed off any spec­u­la­tion about a fu­ture pres­id­en­tial cam­paign. But with many Demo­crats ar­guing that they need their own fam­ous face to chal­lenge Trump, Franken fits the bill as well as any­one.

Stuart Smalley reruns, anyone?

The rest of this is here: https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/647681?unlock=K36E7XFBC11I1KQ7

[Bad Dog]

We would never be that lucky.