My recollection of Friday, which because of the blow when I heard the information, my mad dash to pick up people & head to the vigil, isn't great. But I do seem to recall it was Lillehaug who first mentioned Mondale, and started the "Mondale for Replacement" campaign. On Friday. I remember thinking how creeped out by the interview with him I was, though at the time, I didn't know why. But as soon as I read the article posted at the Strib website late yesterday afternoon with all the gory details of the Saturday morning meeting, well...

I agree, Rebecca Yanish and Norm Coleman--and my god, that horrid, horrid man who is the Republican party chair--have all looked bad. As to Coleman, I really cannot stand him either. But I don't think his reaction on Friday was unusual for a self-absorbed ego maniac, so I really don't hold it against him personally. I think he was deeply shocked. As a friend of mine said, Coleman is a terrible actor, and it was obvious he wasn't acting.

I'm also not so sure that the only reason Coleman isn't campaigning is because his aides told him not to. I really think he isn't campaigning because he genuinely feels the loss for the Wellstone family particularly, and he knows he won't get anywhere doing it anyway. I'm not saying they were close, but it takes a pretty slimy reptile not to feel compassion and empathy for ANY family forced to bear what the Wellstones are suffering right now.

I, and a lot of people I'm talking to about this, really just don't get how people can be THAT cynical. To be so cynical about life as to think that the election really is the most important thing here.

I try and give credit wherever it is due, even to people I really dislike and disagree with. I have a newfound respect for Norm Coleman as a result of this catastrophe. I think in the clutch here, Norm showed he was made of better stuff than some of these Republican party hacks, both nationally and locally. But that was starting to already show awhile back when he was in DC for a fundraiser, and he admitted that despite the Bush Push to War in Iraq (tm), Iraq wasn't what the people on the ground in Minnesota were talking about, the economy was.

So to Norm's credit, he was already pretty tuned in to the disconnect between Minnesota voters and Beltway party hacks and media whores. His own fate has ended up being intimately entwined with that of those who were killed in this crash, and I do think that is what he was commenting on in his own babbling, self-centered way on Friday. I can forgive him for it, considering the circumstances.

At times like this, you have to forgive a lot of people inserting feet in mouth. It is a very stressful, bizarre circumstance. No one has any experience with something like this.

But it is clear who the class acts in Minnesota and national politics are this week. Mondale will be among them, but he is old school. A nest full of rattlesnakes couldn't get him out of his hole before Wednesday. Same with the Wellstones. I don't know what is up with former Republican governor Arnie Carlson's grandstanding today, speaking of reptiles.

Who really thinks Paul Wellstone would have come out politicking this past weekend had the circumstances between him and Coleman been reversed? Not me. That is one of the many great ironies in all of this. Senator Wellstone certainly wouldn't have condoned any of this shit. Wellstone wouldn't have behaved the way Daschle has--ever. Wellstone never would have condoned the back room deals being
"leaked" to the press less than 48 hours after the crash. That one must have come as a very bitter pill for the Wellstone family to swallow.

Crisis and catastrophe always bring out the best and the worst in people, and we tend to see people for who they truly are. And in the case of politics, we tend to remember them that way for a VERY long time, which is a poetic justice of sorts as far as I'm concerned.