A neighbor of mine has edited the autobiography of Walter Mondale (our copy has both Mondale and Hage's signature).
Reading Mondale's story, you learn two things.
One is that progress happens.
The other is that it's always a hell of a fight.
Some people get energy from fighting. Those people enjoy AM talk radio. You may have noticed this talk radio is almost always radio GOP. It's a trait of American conservatives; they like the fight. They like to win most of all, but they get energy from the battle.
My mates don't get energy from fighting. We get a headache. We want to figure things out, then find a solution. We enjoy intelligent debate, we can even appreciate discussions that run into the wall of pure belief, but we don't like the shouting matches and the purely irrational.
So we have a natural disadvantage when it comes to dealing with the GOP. The GOP loves a fight. In Minnesota they lost a tight election to Senator Al Franken in 2008 and they fought like rabid wolverines in a leg trap. This week they lost to Governor Dayton and they swear they'll scream ten times as hard.
We can't fight like that, but we can't give up either. We don't have to scream, but we have to fight.
Staying home is not an option. We have to be the parent, but not the pushover.
Like Mondale.
That's how progress happens.
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