I'd say MN has mostly done better than most states under his pragmatic leadership. Whether you can say it's his doing or not, well sure, it's just a piece of the puzzle.
But your criticism is also reasonable. The Dems haven't actually learned anything about winning elections since they gave up new deal politics.
And yeah, MN is a small place. I'm not gonna dox myself. ¯(ツ)/¯
Re Ken Martin: he's a shrewd political operator. He's been chair in MN for a long time, and made incremental progress and won elections. I'd describe him as a progressive who is not willing to let perfect get in the way of good.
Source: was well connected with the MN DFL about 10yrs ago.
If Congress fails to meet to work on funding the government during a shutdown, then we're truly fucked.
I get people worrying that this is the path to recess appointments, but I think if anything, the shutdown complicates it because Congress will be expected to work tirelessly to find a solution.
"Growth" is possibly the dumbest metric we've been sold.
But now every publicly traded or VC backed company has to "grow" constantly at a multiplicative rate endlessly. Can't be happy making some number of units a year. Gotta diversify and keep finding new ways to grow the business.
God forbid anybody mentions market saturation, or even worse: long term customer satisfaction.
No, profit and dividends weren't enough. Growth offers more faster, so torch anything that stands in the way.
But they'll call it freedom of speech. Speech someone/corp paid for of course, but Citizens United...