Residual Forces

Rep. Keith Ellison (D MN5) has been claiming that he is the next Paul Wellstone, and on the 5th anniversary of the late Senator’s death, Ellison took to the floor of the US House trying to …. well, trying to prove how close he was to Wellstone. But he got a major fact wrong.

Here’s Ellison’s speech in video and text form.

Only the day before we lost him, he was scheduled to come to my office, and we were going to do some campaigning together. It was a long night, Mr. Speaker, when we heard back the reports as the news reports said that a plane has gone down in Ely, Minnesota, and it was thought to be containing Paul Wellstone and his partner, Sheila Wellstone, and their daughter and several other campaigners. We hoped all night that what we thought might have happened didn’t happen, but at the end of the evening, we learned that that tragedy, in fact, did occur. Our worst fears were confirmed when we learned that we lost him, but it was a long several hours before we realized that that tragedy had actually occurred, and we had hoped against hope. I will never forget that night.

Wellstone was a unique individual for sure, and I myself felt like I had been punched in the gut when I heard the news that morning. Despite our 100% difference on the issues, he wasn’t polarizing in public like most Democrats. Now behind closed doors I am sure all bets on that were off, as you don’t become the patron saint of liberal progressives by being nice to Republicans in Minnesota, but still, Wellstone was always who he was because it was who he was. He was never afraid to admit he was the fringe liberal he was, unlike those trying to follow in his footsteps.

Regarding Ellison’s floor stunt, it was in the morning when Wellstone’s plane crashed. It was a cold cloudy Fall day here in the Twin Cities, if my memory serves, when the news broke. Not in the evening or at night, as Mr. Ellison ‘never forgets’.

That’s right, I think Rep. Ellison is trying to steal the memory of Wellstone for his own benefit, and in his official memorial to the late Senator, he can’t even get the facts right. Facts are stubborn things, and Ellison sure seemed to be reaching during his speech. He was stammering and seemed to be grasping, not remembering.
Oh and oddly enough, Ellison has pulled the downloadable versions of his speech down. The links are still there on the speech page to download them, but the files have been removed. Maybe that is just another mistake on his part.

In the end, it was Wellstone’s day, but Ellison couldn’t leave it at that. He tried as hard as he could to claim the Wellstone mantle as his own. If I was a Dem and held Wellstone up as a progressive prophet, I’d be offended by Ellison’s speech. But I’m not a Democrat, thank the lord.