Congratulations to Mark Dayton for winning an election based on fundamental and basic liberal, progressive and leftist principles:
- Tax the rich.
- Support for affirmative action.
Mark Dayton has long supported single-payer universal health care and he needs to make this a major part of his campaign agenda.
The Warriors for Justice gave Mark Dayton the boost his campaign needed to win by nominating him from the floor of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Convention in Duluth where I was sitting as an observer in the balcony while delegates went wild with support for his nomination even though MNDFL Chair Brian Melendez refused to allow Dayton on the convention floor.
Mark Dayton can win the General Election if he focuses on re-building the historic liberal-progressive-left coalition that Minnesotans are known the world over for which elected Floyd Olson, Elmer Benson, Rudy Perpich, Paul Wellstone and helped guide Eugene McCarthy.
Mark Dayton will fail in his bid for governor if he is sucked into a campaign like that of Barack Obama's by the business interests in control of the DFL. Melendez and his gaggle of pro-business, racist party hacks will have to go; otherwise Dayton is going to have to build his own campaign structure independent of the DFL leadership and most DFL legislators who, unlike Dayton, are more committed to big business, insurance companies and casinos than working people.
Rudy Perpich found out just how rotten these people with big-business interests in the MNDFL actually are and he very belatedly came to the conclusion he would have to begin working outside of the DFL if he wanted to accomplish real progressive change like increasing the taconite tax to pay for quality public education.
If Mark Dayton sets up campaign committees independent of the DFL now dominated and controlled by big business interests these campaign committees might be building blocks and the creation of a foundation for a real progressive political party in Minnesota.
I find the creation of the Warriors for Justice, one of whose leaders is a young mother, the way we need to go. Mark Dayton took to heart the suggestions of the Warriors for Justice in his public support for affirmative action. He could learn even more from their electoral initiatives as they broke free from the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party and gave his campaign for governor the boost he needed to win the Primary Election. Dayton, if he wants to win in November, would now be well advised to take a few more ideas from the Warriors for Justice by working himself free from the restraints of the DFL which has not been able to deliver a governor since Rudy Perpich by establishing campaign committees independent of the DFL. Certainly Mark Dayton must be intelligent enough to understand that those like Brian Melendez and most DFL legislators who opposed him because of his stands for taxing the rich and support for affirmative action are not going to turn around and make an all out effort to elect him governor because their real pro-big business sympathies lie more with the Republican program as evidenced by their refusal to fight Pawlenty and their failure to support initiatives aimed at saving the Ford Plant in St. Paul and bailing out working people.
Lisa
