Mike Lindell (background) behind President Trump. Minnesota Reformer/Getty.
President Trump has endorsed Mike Lindell for Minnesota Governor. Minnesota Reformer. Lindell, the founder of My Pillow, and a personal friend of Trump got the coveted endorsement over legislator Lisa Demuth and Army veteran Kendall Qualls. If Lindell wins he would likely face Senator Amy Klobucher, who has a large polling lead in the state. The move is controversial given the split in endorsements as both Demuth and Qualls has support at the local level. Lindell was leading in primary polling even before the Trump endorsement.
My Comment:
I feel that this is a "white flag" on Minnesota. I had thought that the GOP had an opportunity to flip the governorship given how colossally bad Tim Walz has been as Governor but the Lindell endorsement seems like the exactly wrong move if that was the goal. Instead, this seems like Trump is just doing a solid for a friend because he knows the state isn't going to flip.
If Minnesota was in play, I could have seen the Republicans use the same strategy that worked in 2021 in Virginia with Glenn Youngkin. Youngkin was a moderate Republican, so he didn't scare off the left-leaning moderates in Virginia. Youngkin was also able to use a huge political issue that the Democrats had no defense for. In Virginia it was transgender issues, in Minnesota it absolutely could have been corruption.
Can Lindell do that? Possibly, but he's absolutely not the best choice for it. Lindell absolutely scares the "normies" and is pretty far to the right for Minnesota. Do I think he's right about election security and the 2020 election being crooked? Of course! But are moderates in Minnesota going to agree with him? I doubt it.
I don't know much about Demuth and Qualls, but you would have to think that they would have been better choices to push the fraud angle and damage the DFL in Minnesota. Indeed, Lisa Demuth looks like the perfect candidate for a left-leaning state like Minnesota and I think she would be a much better candidate than Lindell. Lindell would be the better candidate in a true red state, but this is Minnesota we are talking about.
To be fair to the DFL/Democrats, Amy Klobucher is a strong candidate. I don't like her, obviously, but she has a national profile and she is just distant enough from Tim Walz that she is probably untouched by his absolutely awful corruption scandals. Beating her would be tough, so it makes sense that Trump is raising the white flag here.
Still, it's incredibly disappointing to me. I don't think Lindell has a real path to victory in Minnesota. To be fair, both Demuth and Qualls would have a longshot as well, but they would have a better chance than Lindell. It makes me sad as that means that both the Somali fraudsters that fleeced the state and the DFL party that enabled and profited from it, especially Governor Walz, will almost certainly go unpunished at the state level. The only hope now is that the Feds take a very long and close look at Minnesota.
The only thing I can think of that might justify this is the idea that election security is about to be the main issue in 2026. Supposedly, Trump's nationwide address is going to prove foreign interference in the 2020 election. I'm skeptical that there is any level of fraud that would get the Democrats to admit that the 2020 election was a joke at best and outright fraudulent at worst, but if convincing evidence is presented, Lindell would be poised to take advantage of it. Even then, I don't think he's the right fit for this race and that Demuth or Qualls would be the better choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment