So, the DSCC is moving in with a big buy in South Dakota. So what? You don’t live there, so what do you care? Hell, it exhausts me to even think about trying to explain the Senate race in South Dakota, let alone why you might want to give a crap about it.
Pretty much everything about American politics exhausts me might now, which is why I haven’t been writing too much. It’s not writer’s block exactly. It’s just fatigue. What are we doing? How are we going to get out of this jam? Where is all the energy we had back in 2005? Even if I had the energy to try it, I can’t organize potted plants.
I guess I am digressing. I am in a mood. There’s shit to understand about South Dakota but the public is being custom-fitted for a collective hazmat suit for the brain. Ebola! Benghazi! Hamas!
Who the fuck is going to read this thing anyway, which I will publish in the middle of the night? What difference will it make?
Well, judging by all generous donations you’ve been making over the last few days, I’m guessing there are more people who still give a shit than the cable news channels want me to know about. So, here goes.
Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota is retiring. He’s a quiet and unassuming fellow, and was so even before he suffered a stroke that it made it hard from him to enunciate or to speak at length on the Senate floor. But, he’s a powerful man who wields the gavel on the Banking Committee which he took from Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut after Dodd retired to become a Hollywood lobbyist.
South Dakota likes banking and credit cards. They’re silly like that.
When the international banking giant Citibank moved its credit-card operations to Sioux Falls, S.D. in 1981, it altered the small Midwestern city overnight. With a population of barely 80,000 at the time, Sioux Falls still had an economy built on agriculture and meat-packing. But when state leaders, desperate to attract outside businesses during the economic recession of the early 1980s, changed South Dakota’s usury laws to eliminate the cap on interest rates and fees, Citibank came calling.
The company initially promised to bring 500 jobs to the area and to build a large facility in northwest Sioux Falls. Citibank now employs more than 2,900 workers in the city, and it anchors a financial sector that provides more than 16,000 jobs in a metro area with a growing population of nearly 230,000 residents. And according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., South Dakota holds more bank assets—$2.5 trillion—than any other state in the country.
They say that Senator Tim Johnson represents the people of South Dakota, but we know better, don’t we? He actually represents $2.5 trillion in assets, more than any other state in the country.
South Dakota! Who knew?
But Senator Johnson is retiring and someone else will have to oversee our banking laws. And that means that people are clamoring to butter up the next chairman of the Banking Committee. Could be a Democrat or it could be a Republican, but that depends on which party winds up controlling the Senate next year.
And that brings us back to Tim Johnson’s seat, because everyone has assumed for a year or more that it would soon belong to the former Republican governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds. When you read all the odds makers telling you what the chances are of the GOP taking over the Senate, they all presume that the South Dakota seat is lost. But, maybe it isn’t. Maybe Harry Reid and the DSCC have had a card up their sleeve all along.
Maybe I am already exhausted, but I am just getting warmed up. Still, in order to give myself a breather, let me have the esteemed Mark Halperin and his half-wit sidekick explain:
Public and private polls show Rounds, a former governor who easily won two terms, mired in the mid-30s with both Democrat Rick Weiland and former Republican Senator Larry Pressler within striking distance. A fourth candidate, independent Gordon Howie, is trailing, but Democrats think his presence in the race is giving them a chance to win by siphoning conservative votes. In a four-way race, less than 35 percent of the vote could be a winning total.
Democrats believe they will keep the seat in their party’s hands if either Weiland or Pressler prevails. Pressler is also running as an independent, but Democrats believe he could well caucus with them. He publicly endorsed President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Every sophisticated political strategist knows that going negative in a three-way race benefits the candidate who is neither attacking nor defending, and that means that the DSCC’s decision to blast Mike Rounds on the behalf of Democrat Rick Weiland will primarily benefit the independent Larry Pressler. That works out nicely because Pressler is polling in second place anyway. And Weiland can’t really complain because, what? He doesn’t need the help?
And, so, if all goes according to plan, the DSCC’s ad blitz will sink ex-Gov. Rounds under an ethical cloud of his own making, related to some kind of visa scandal that you really, really don’t give a shit about. And, because the public hates negative campaigning, the good people of South Dakota will also conclude that Mr. Weiland is a desperate shit-heel that they want nothing to do with. Meanwhile, over here stands Mr. Pressler, with clean hands and a wan smile. He’s above all that nepotism and mudslinging, and he’s not partisan at all. He’s a Republican who endorsed Obama. He’s two yellow stripes in the middle of the road.
Does Harry Reid give a shit? He didn’t even want Weiland to run in the first place. Weiland is a Daschle guy. And you know how that is. If you have a memory you do, anyway.
But we’re getting so far down in the weeds.
Harry Reid is a master strategist. He’s a political pugilist who keeps conjuring up stunning rabbits out of unseen hats. But I am catching on to his game, as I anticipated his move in Kansas.
