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Mitch Anderson

Minneapolis, MN
Commenter for
3 years 6 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 03/20/13 at 11:58 am in response to A voting statistic to terrify Republicans (even more than the Hispanic stuff)

The majority of young voters are liberal, while the majority of old voters are conservative.

More interesting: When does this crossover from 'young liberal' to 'old conservative' happen? Fascinatingly enough, there's no particular age when it happens. The biggest predictor of the shift in political views is when a person becomes a parent.

Coming full circle, while that 24 point gap among young voters bodes well for Democrats, I'd be interested in knowing how much that number...

Posted on 03/18/13 at 11:22 am in response to What are the demographics of the communities subsidizing the Vikings stadium?

Gambling is a tax for people who are bad at math.

Posted on 12/07/12 at 12:54 pm in response to Minnesota news media: Who tops the Twitter 1,000

In response to commenter #1, try checking Brauer's list of journalists on Twitter for a couple minutes throughout the day, then watch a half hour of the 6 o'clock local news. Tell me which one you learn more from.

Posted on 10/04/12 at 11:30 am in response to The dangers of government that doesn’t get things done

The main question seems to be how do you fix a system that's built on compromise when the politicians running it refuse to compromise?

The problem, as I see it, is that the way our election system is set up encourages politicians to pursue the hardened partisan bases; i.e. the people who actually come out to vote in primaries.

This is a problem because it leads politicians to prioritize catering to the minority fringe rather than the moderate voters who make up most of the...

Posted on 10/02/12 at 03:24 pm in response to U.S. or parliamentary system? One is nearly gridlock-proof — and it ain’t ours

I know of one simple solution to our current gridlocked government that would not require its complete overhaul into a parliamentary system. In this case we have to look no further than our friends down under: The Australian government requires mandatory voting in all national elections.

The system works by requiring all Australian citizens to vote on election day or instead get fined the equivalent of a parking ticket. Before mandatory voting was written into law in 1924, Australians...

Posted on 03/30/11 at 10:39 pm in response to Census: MSP grows, but only on the edge; experts see trouble ahead

Anecdotal evidence and my gut feeling makes me think Dean (#8) is definitely onto something here. Unfortunately for the theory's sake, Steve pulled his data from the census for this piece, which means we can only view the decade as a whole instead of breaking it down into halves and seeing if the trend changed at all.

Posted on 01/14/11 at 03:09 pm in response to Facebook registration: mandatory for newspaper commenting?

I used to work as a part-time Star Tribune comment moderator to make a little money on the side. Despite the efforts of a handful of intelligent contributors, most thoughtful comments were drowned out by a sea of partisan talking points shouted at each other in all caps.

Although it's easy enough to fake a Facebook account -- much like it'd be easy enough to fake your name here on Minnpost -- the fact of the matter is most trolls are extremely lazy, and even a small hurdle to...

Posted on 12/29/10 at 10:57 am in response to The 77 best albums I heard (thus far) in 2010

Glaring omission: The Black Keys/Brothers

Posted on 10/01/10 at 11:26 am in response to The Bachmann/Clark race: money, technology, truth, falsehood and Garrison Keillor

Ironic that Bachmann's spokester tells Keillor to stick to making up stories, since too often that's what the congresswoman herself does.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2010/sep/21/bachmann-and...

Posted on 08/05/10 at 12:46 pm in response to In the bull's-eye: How Target -- and Minnesota -- landed at ground zero of an expensive U.S. debate

No Dennis, I think the lesson is that when a corporation publicly aligns itself with a candidate, that corporation is then lumped together with ALL of said candidate's political views. It doesn't matter what Steinhafel's intentions were, only public perception matters. Like it or not, money for MN Forward is money that goes toward electing an anti-gay mariage, anti-abortion and anti-minimum wage governor.

The really crazy thing is how all the blowback has almost exclusively been...